


K-W 2018 Prompts

by Callaeidae3



Series: KWmonth (Keithtober x Whumptober) [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hostage Situations, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Missions Gone Wrong, Nightmares, Recovery, Space Whales, Team Voltron Family, Team as Family, kwmonth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 31,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callaeidae3/pseuds/Callaeidae3
Summary: Keithtober x Whumptober prompts!Prompts written: 1. Naxzela; 2. Trials of Marmora; 3. Orphan; 4. Garrison; 5. Kerberos; 6. Fire; 7. Nightmares; 8. Kral Zera; 9. Hostage; 10. Loner; 11. Abandoned; 12. Cryopods; 13. Discipline Case; 14. Desert; 15. Last Words; 16. Alien Planet; 17. Red Lion; 18. Leadership; 19. Space Whale; 20. Sword/Blade; 21. Pilot; 22. Krolia; 23. Found Family; 24. Training; 25. "I guess I have some walls up."; 26. Shiro; 27. (Two) Black Paladins; 28. "I'm fine."; 29. Black Lion; 30. Space Craft; 31. Free Day





	1. Naxzela: It Wasn't Me

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I decided to challenge myself: I'm terrible at writing from prompts so this is a brilliant writing exercise for me. Some of these prompts may only get a few hundred words out of me...but hey! Here I am giving it a shot! I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> Special thanks to @koganewest for collaborating with me on making a Keithtober-Whumptober prompt list!

Everyone’s shouts.

_We’re really going to miss you._

…would they have, really?

_Keith, no!_

…was Matt really the only one who realised?

 _Good work, Keith._ The smile in Shiro’s voice.

“Keith.”

Kolivan’s waiting for him to get out of the ship. Expecting debrief, probably.

_You’re going to have to control your emotions if you’re going to lead this group someday._

It’s not working. The whole flight back he tried to calm himself down, tried to get control over his emotions. Keith doesn’t want Kolivan to see him like this. He’ll get kicked out of the Blade of Marmora for being this emotional.

But he can’t go back to Voltron. They don’t need him anymore. They…they don’t want him anymore. So he has to face Kolivan, and since the Blade leader has been waiting for him to jump out of the ship for a good two minutes, it’s better now than later.

Keith lands on his feet unsteadily. The truckload of adrenaline still hasn’t left him. The quivering of his upper lip is still there. His legs are weak, and there’s no way Keith trusts his voice not to be the same.

_Emotions are a luxury we cannot afford._

Kolivan makes a point of moving so that he’s standing between Keith and the door leading out of the hangar. His mask is lowered, a deep frown on his face.

Keith takes a shaky breath. “Not now, Kolivan.”

He tries to walk on past but Kolivan holds out an arm, forcing him to stop. The moment he does, his knees almost buckle.

_Maybe not without weapons._

Keith’s struggling to draw in enough air.

_You did it!_

Black edges his vision.

_It wasn’t me._

“Keith.”

He overbalances, loses the lock he had on his knees and crashes to the ground.

In front of Kolivan.

Keith tries to remember how to breathe, tries to stop his hands from shaking the way they are.

Kolivan simply stands there. He makes no move to help. He says nothing either. Keith doesn’t know what that means and it scares him.

Should he apologise? For acting this way, not for being willing to sacrifice himself.

Should he…

He pitches sideways and loses consciousness.

 

 

Keith comes to in his barrack bed. He’s lying on his back, still in his suit, covered up by his blanket. He instinctively goes to roll over but he’s too ridiculously weak to do so.

There’s a lot of fog in his brain. A hollow tightness in his chest. It’s a little easier to breathe now, but he still feels sick from the adrenaline overload. Someone’s telling him he’s going to feel unwell for a while, that he needs to take a decent number of hours to get it out of his system.

The voice registers in his mind. Keith turns his head to left slightly, pulse accelerating, to see Kolivan leaning against the wall, arms folded.

It’s impossible to decipher the look on his face. It always has been. He must be greatly disappointed. Keith failed miserably to keep his emotions in check.

But the Blade leader startles him.

“You’re in shock,” he murmurs.

Keith’s not sure what Kolivan means. Being in shock doesn’t excuse his inability to calm himself, surely. He’s a Blade. It’s expected of him to be able to do so regardless.

“Give yourself time to process it,” Kolivan says. “Planning out next strike on the Empire will take some time; there won’t be any missions for at least a movement. Don’t overexert yourself between now and then.”

Kolivan, a man of few words, is saying so much and Keith doesn’t understand why none of them contain any trace of reprimanding.

“Rest, then come and debrief. There’s replenishments on the floor beside you when you need them.”

Keith swallows. “Y…y-you’re no’ mad?”

“For what reason would I need to express anger?”

“I…I fainted…?”

_…in front of you…_

“You’re in shock,” Kolivan repeats. “Even the best of soldiers go through it. Rest.”

Keith stares at him numbly.

With nothing more to inform, the Blade leader leaves.

The others are probably in the middle of debriefing, so Keith has the barracks to himself. As tired as he is though, he doesn’t sleep. He knows what he’ll dream about if he does and so he makes a point of avoiding it.

Every time his eyes drift closed he sees the shield exploding into flames in front of him, feels his hands clench around the control sticks as he yanks them back. The terror in realising how close he’d come to killing himself.

He was going to do it. He’d made up his mind.

_I was going to do it._

He clutches the blanket closer to his chest.

He’d been so eager to chase down Lotor once. And yet – as though the universe knew in advance – they never caught him, enabling Lotor to be the one to take down the shield instead of Keith.

_And they all cheered, thinking it was me._

Keith _knows_ it wasn’t because they thought he was dead.

He _knows_ they were only cheering because they didn’t realise that Keith’s idea of stopping Naxzela from going off was a sacrifice.

But it’s left him badly shaken.

He’s glad he doesn’t have to face the paladins in person any time soon. He doesn’t think he could.

Because, after all, it was Shiro who congratulated him on his kamikaze attempt.

He needs a distraction. He needs to stop thinking now before he overthinks things and drives himself crazy like he did in the desert. Keith gets up, drinks half the water Kolivan placed at the head of the bed for him, and goes to clean up.

He’s a stumbling mess on the way to the shower room. If any of the other Blades saw him like this…

Thankfully, he makes it the whole way without meeting anyone.

His suit’s laden with dried sweat. Keith isn’t ashamed to admit he stinks of it. He forces it off him, sends it through a wash cycle and proceeds to wash himself.

The showers here don’t have the same therapeutic quality as the showers back on Earth, or even the Castle of Lions, though. What he’d give for hot water…

By the time he’s finished and the suit’s finished going through the drying cycle, he feels a little better physically. But that’s as far as it goes.

He dons the suit and stays there in the shower room until his heartrate levels out again.

 

 

It’s twenty-eight hours before the shock wears off.

It’s two years and six weeks before he sees the paladins again.


	2. Trials of Marmora: Wake Up, Keith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Keith had taken longer to come around after passing out during the Trials?

Voices, distant and close all at once.

His whole body aches.

Someone’s telling him to wake up. They’re shaking him.

Or maybe it’s the ground shaking beneath him? Maybe both?

“Keith."

There’s a fierce tug in his chest, something Keith dimly registers is his connection with Red. 

"I need you to wake up, buddy.”

_Why's Red so upset?_

Someone unfamiliar says something, but the words all blend into a string of sounds.

Keith’s trying fight of the pull of unconsciousness, but he’s too exhausted. He has to save his energy.

“…eith?”

He still doesn’t get what’s going on. Did he do something wrong? Is he responsible for the quaking ground?

Someone taps the side of his face. “Come on, buddy. Wake up.”

Shiro must be right beside him. So why does his voice sound so far away?

Then Shiro swears.

…something can’t be right. Shiro never swears.

His upper body's being lifted off the ground then, pulled into strong arms and shielded there.

“If you want it, then let him be the one to give it. It's only fair that way."

Pain flares in his shoulder. Keith groans.

“The blade does not belong to him. He failed to awaken it!”

Keith draws in a deep breath and mumbles, “’uht ‘oes tha’ mmmnh?” _What does that mean?_

They can't understand him.

Shiro’s arm tightens around his shoulders and a familiar hum powers up.

The tell-tale sound of a sword being drawn.

Red’s still not letting up.

Keith decides, in his delirious state, that it’s not worth it. He's too weak to fight for answers, and at the end of the day, they all need to work together to defeat Zarkon. If he has to give up the knife, then fine.

“Jhih tay ih.” _Just take it._

Shiro tenses. He’s not sure whether that means he’s about to launch into a fight or he’s waiting, so Keith tries again.

“Jus’ take it. Th’ knife. Jus’..”

If he concentrates hard enough, he can feel the handle of his knife in a loose grip in his left hand. He curls his fingers around it, summoning the strength to push it across the floor, when the light passing through his eyelids burns an intense white-purple.

The fighting stops. That’s a relief.

But the new light sends a weird, buzzing feeling through his veins and Keith’s puzzled. It’s like his own life force just connected with another. Stranger still, it’s all concentrated into one place: the knife.

Shiro exhales sharply as the light dies down.

Keith frowns. The knife suddenly feels a lot heavier than usual. Not only that, but he feels a sudden resurgence of energy flowing through him.

“He’s awoken the blade,” someone says, high-pitched as though awed.

Keith forces his eyes open. Everything’s a little distorted and the room's spinning, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing the sword in his left hand.

… _sword?_

Kolivan and the other Blades gather round, carefully. Shiro's gaze flicks between the sword and the Blade leader.

Kolivan’s is supposedly fixed on Keith.

“The only way this is possible,” he says slowly, “is if Galra blood runs through your veins.”

Neither Keith nor Shiro say a word. Shiro’s gone as still as a rock. Keith wonders if he’s still seeing and hearing things like he was before…or after…he passed out.

At least Red’s stopped attacking the base. That’s a good thing, right?

“I suppose this comes as a surprise to you.”

Keith turns his head to look at Shiro's face. Shiro stares down at him, a strange look in his eyes. Then his brow creases and he speaks to Kolivan.

“We need to get back to the Castle of Lions. Our team is probably aware that Red was attacking. No doubt they’re worried.”

Shiro doesn’t mention Keith’s state.

Kolivan nods. “I am willing to consider your proposal for an alliance. May I accompany you?”

Oddly enough, it’s not Shiro who makes that decision for them. Instead, he looks back down at Keith, eyebrow raised.

It’s Red they’ll be flying back in after all.

Keith manages a small nod.

Shiro takes his other hand and pulls his arm around his shoulders. Keith gasps as the pain throbbing in his shoulder intensifies. The room lurches sideways and Keith with it.

Shiro puts an arm around his waist to steady him. “You going to be alright, Keith? I can carry you if you want.”

Keith shakes his head slowly, squeezing his eyes shut against the tilting of the room.

“I’ll be fine,” he whispers.

He’ll be fine, that is, until the reality of what Kolivan said comes crashing down on him.

However much he wishes he’d been hallucinating Kolivan’s words, his knife is still a sword.


	3. Orphan: Not Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K-W Prompt: 3. Orphan

Keith burns with anger. He doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t get it one bit.

He’s not worth it. He’s expendable.

He’s not needed on Team Voltron anymore and as a Blade, being willing to sacrifice himself for the mission is expected of him.

“I still can’t believe you’d give them the weapon just to save me,” Keith mutters. “You compromised the mission.”

Krolia glares at him over her shoulder. “Keith, shut up and trust me.”

That drives a spear through his heart. Those are _his_ words. Having said them before is one thing; hearing them is another.

Is there a reason why Krolia’s allowed to let her emotions get in the way and he’s not?

Keith knows he can’t win this argument. Besides, they’re here now, both of them. They’ve just got to get out of this other situation. He leaves Krolia to the communicating and takes up his position in the pilot’s seat.

His nerves are all on edge. Piloting them into space isn’t going to be a walk in the park. The flight in was dangerous enough, and now he’ll also have to dodge blasts from an ion cannon – beams that are going to be aimed directly at their ship.

Krolia reads out the code. Keith scowls.

If she’d let Trugg take him, or kill him, they could’ve avoided this. They could’ve –

_“Keith, shut up and trust me.”_

Perhaps it’s more how easily he accepted dying that’s getting at him. Maybe it’s more the thought that no one would’ve really missed him had Krolia not surrendered. Keith doesn’t have a family. Voltron’s not it and he’s got no one missing him back on Earth.

Shiro…

“Get us out of here, now!”

Keith shoves his thoughts aside and launches the ship.

He concentrates on getting them clear, on evading, on sending the ship forwards in a mix of tight turns and accelerating ascent.

In the back of his mind, though, is the persistent thought we _might not make it out of here._

He bets the Garrison are glad he’s gone.

Voltron, too. They don't have to worry about his poor leadership. They won’t have to worry about there being a sixth paladin.

Kolivan would be relieved not to have to put with his emotions any longer.

And his family? What family? They’re all gone. He’s an –

In the upper atmosphere, a beam scorches past mere centimetres from the cockpit.

Keith grits his teeth, heart hammering.  “This is why you shouldn’t have made that trade for me,” he shouts. “We could die, and you just handed that weapon over to Trugg!”

“No, Keith,” Krolia says calmly. “I handed them over to it.”

Like he has any idea what that’s supposed to mean.

_Forget it._ This mission isn’t about him. It’s about getting Krolia to safety. Even if he doesn’t care about himself as much as he should, he’s not willing to let those thoughts take Krolia down with him.

A minute later, the console alerts fall silent.

It’s quiet. No more blasts of energy shooting at them.

Keith frowns. “We’re far enough away. They stopped firing at us.”

He slides the pilot’s seat back, brow furrowed, and stands up to face Krolia.

The operative reaches behind her. “Here,” she says, presenting Keith with his blade. “I should give this back to you.”

Keith takes it with narrowed eyes. “How were you able to use it?”

“Because it used to be mine,” Krolia murmurs, “before I gave it to your father.”

...

Huh?

How on earth – literally, how _on Earth_ – could a Galra woman…

Keith’s eyes widen as he finds himself suddenly searching Krolia’s face for any resemblance to himself.

And oh, does he find it.

“You’re my…Mum?”

 

And for the first time in twelve years, the word ‘orphan’ doesn’t apply to him.


	4. Garrison: What It Became

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> l recommend listening to Max Richter's 'On the Nature of Daylight' while reading this. I had it on loop while writing ...

As the rebel ship emerges from the hyper-jump, Krolia understands once more why she left.

Half of the Garrison is reduced to rubble.

The surrounding land is scarred with craters and scorch marks. Clouds of dust drift over the desert. And there, a twisted hunk of metal lying a small distance from the Garrison base, is Sendak’s battle cruiser.

This is why she left. It was inevitable that the war would eventually wind up involving Earth, but things could’ve turned out a whole lot worse.

Because she left, the Empire never discovered the Blue Lion. Instead, Keith did.

Because she left, Voltron was able to stall Zarkon’s expansion of the Empire and start liberating planets. They were able to give the resistance the foothold they so desperately needed. The Blade of Marmora were able to start fighting back for real. The rebel forces were able to unite.

Because Krolia left, Earth stood a chance of surviving. _Keith_ stood a chance of surviving.

And now, after leaving him a second time, the war she’d tried to stall almost killed him.

 

The base is a flurry of activity. Humans are busy organising teams for various duties.

Krolia and Kolivan lead their band of Blade of Marmora agents through the midst of them. Their presence sets the majority of them on edge, but the stares they receive are not hostile. Wary, for sure, but not accusing.

It’s a means for relief. Tensions would’ve been running a lot higher had she shown up at this base when she arrived here twenty-three…no, twenty-five or -six years ago.

It brings back memories. Of a fireman who sheltered her from the desert winds and the curious eye of his people. Of nights wrapped up in the warmth of his arms, listening to the unfamiliar words spoken by a voice that soon became familiar.

But that's all they are now: memories.

As the Blades walk in off the tarmac, masks lowered, Shiro greets them with tired smile.

“Krolia. Kolivan,” he says. “It’s good to see you two again.”

Unconsciously Krolia finds herself scanning the sea of faces for him, as though hoping the visions she saw on the space whale and the stories Keith told of growing up an orphan weren’t true.

But there’s no Kogane waiting for her here. Not even her son.

Kolivan inclines his head. “It is good to meet again.”

Shiro nods an acknowledgement to the Blades trailing behind, then shares an indescribable glance with Kolivan and Krolia.

“Keith still hasn’t woken up yet,” he says, voice significantly quieter. “We’re hoping he’ll come around soon, but there’s no certainty as to when.”

Kolivan turns slightly so that his shoulder is open to Krolia. It’s a subtle gesture, one that doesn’t involve eye contact.

“Go to your son,” he says.

Krolia’s at a loss for words, both personal and political. She wants to object, defaulting to ‘mission before the individual’. But there is no mission at present. There is little they can do to help with in repairs at this stage and, if Krolia’s learned anything about Kolivan, it’s that he wants to see how Keith’s doing, too.

 _Kolivan’s giving me time alone with him,_ she realises.

Just like how he sent them on a lengthy mission right after Krolia’s extraction, or rather, right after mother and son came face to face for the first time in eighteen years.

Shiro turns to the hangar entrance. "Let me show you the way."

 

She follows Shiro wordlessly through the hallways of the Garrison complex.

People salute as they walk by, eyes wide at the sight of Krolia following close behind. She wonders if it looks like she’s scowling to them. If she is, there’s little she can do to fix it.

Krolia’s not exactly in the best of moods at present: the memory of her blade’s light dimming is still fresh in her mind.

The door is open.

A shadow trots across the floor and Kosmo peers around the door. His ears perk up when he sees Krolia. Shiro’s expression morphs into something unreadable as he looks inside.

Krolia joins them and her gut twists.

He’s lying in the kind of sleep someone can’t be roused from. A bandage wrapped tight around his head and a mask over his face to help him breathe. The only movement is the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Shiro quietly takes his leave.

“Keith,” Krolia whispers. She follows Kosmo over to his bedside. “Keith.”

Her son doesn’t stir; he continues sleeping away. Krolia lays a hand over his. She studies the needle in the inside of his arm for a moment before she can look at his face again.

It’s not like she’s never seen him asleep. But this…this isn’t just asleep. It’s unconscious. It’s comatose. It’s different.

She misses the light in Keith’s eyes. Yearns for all the expressions she’s seen him make, the voice that sounds so much like hers and so much like his father’s. The way he squares his shoulders when he gets defensive. The scowl he wears when he’s deep in thought.

Kosmo rests his head on the bed and huffs out a breath.

All they can do is wait.

 

Kolivan navigates his way through the Garrison a varga later. He slips in without a word and settles down on the bench opposite Krolia.

While Kolivan updates her on the Garrison’s current plan of action, consisting mostly of repairs and rebuilding the coalition, Krolia absent-mindedly rubs her thumb over the back of Keith’s hand. Every now and then Kolivan’s gaze drifts to Keith’s face and lingers there a dobash or two, conversation cutting out.

During one such moment, a medic comes in. He does what he needs to, checking over Keith and deciding he’ll be fine without the oxygen mask from now on - then leaves in a hurry.

Kolivan smirks a little at that, in a very Keith-like way.

With all important matters spoken of, they fall into a comfortable silence.

Krolia wonders what would’ve become of them had she not crashed her ship that night. She stands by what she said to Keith’s father all those years ago: it was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to her.

It is, after all, how she came to meet Keith.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I don't think I've ever cried while writing something. I have now.


	5. Kerberos: Because The Universe Had Other Ideas

Keith veers towards the canyons. He should ease off the throttle, but he doesn’t; he accelerates. There’s too much adrenaline flowing through his veins and it’s not from flying.

The sun reflects off the hovercraft’s panels and the desert sand all around him. Keith can barely see. He curses the way the world blinds him, curses the Garrison and their stupid excuse for lost contact with the Kerberos crew and proceeds to curse himself for having been stupid enough to allow Shiro into his heart.

Everyone leaves him. There’s no exceptions, even if the action isn’t voluntary. And he’s alone, flying solo in the blinding midday sun, expelled, abandoned, _lost –_

The wing hits sand.

The hovercraft lurches sideways, flinging Keith from the pilot’s seat. He’s too shocked to scream.

Sand. Sand. Sky.

Pain.

A dull ache spreads through his shoulder. He lies still. His heart beats wildly in his ears.

There’s a sharp pain in his wrist and his headache’s gotten worse, but otherwise…he seems fine, relatively speaking. The hovercraft, humming a couple of metres away, waiting for him, seems undamaged too.

_We should really wear helmets on these things,_ he thinks. Not like he ever would. He likes the feel of the wind whipping through his hair.

And just like that, he’s thinking of Shiro again. About their crazy races and the thrill of Shiro teaching him how to do the flight off the cliff. Shiro’s exhilarated smile, the one he always wore after flying.

And just like that, he’s fuming again.

Keith’s not sure which burns worse: the desert heat, the anger in his chest or the throbbing pain in his right wrist. The first drowns him, the second stabs him in the gut and _twists…_

It’s definitely the second.

Pilot error. Shiro. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

Of all the times they used to go out riding together, Shiro had plenty of opportunities for pilot error, namely flying his hoverbike off the edge of a cliff.

When Shiro takes risks, they’re calculated. He’ll only take them if necessary or if he’s worked up the confidence of knowing he’ll be able to avoid as much damage as possible. Not to mention that he’d been studying his Kerberos flight patterns and the terrain surrounding the landing sites for _months_ before that ship ever left Earth.

Keith refuses to believe the Garrison. If something happened to the crew, it most certainly couldn’t have been Shiro’s fault. It’s unfair, blaming the mission going wrong on Shiro. While it’s true that even the best pilots make mistakes, it’s also true that something entirely out of Shiro’s – out of any of the crew’s – control could’ve happened.

Something in his gut tells him so. He’d sooner believe they were abducted by aliens than believe Shiro would mess up so badly.

Keith heaves a sigh and pushes himself up. Sand clings to his clothes. His head spins with dehydration. His body aches. His mind…is driving him crazy.

He’s going to go crazy out here.

He’s going to _die_ out here unless he finds shelter and water really soon.

…would it matter if he did?

_“Keith, I will never give up on you. But more importantly, you can’t give up on yourself.”_

Keith laughs bitterly, but he gets to his feet nonetheless and stumbles over to his hoverbike.

“Why, Shiro?” he says aloud. “Why should I not give up on myself? Everyone else has. I have nothing left. I have _no one_ left. How can you expect me to be okay with that?”

Something stirs deep in his heart then. A yearning. A conviction. It’s like some energy is telling him to search, some greater life force telling him that there is a distinct purpose for his being alone out here.

That where he thinks he’s alone, where it legitimately seems like he is…he actually isn’t.

But there’s nothing but sandstone and sky and desert for ages. He’s the only one who lives out here, he’s sure of it.

He suddenly gets the feeling that that isn’t the case, either. That someone or some _thing_ has been here for far, far longer than he can even imagine. That it’s been out here for thousands of years, mostly undiscovered.

And Keith finds himself inexplicably drawn to it.

 

 

The mission to Kerberos was only ever meant to be a simple means of exploration. A scientist, an engineer and a pilot travelling to the far reaches of the solar system to collect samples of ice from a moon of a planet not even classified as a planet.

But that mission became the start of a revolution. It was the first ripple of hope the universe had seen in over ten thousand years, and the human the witch called her Champion soon became theirs.

And while Keith hadn’t known it at the time, his lonesome presence in the desert played a critical part in that hope becoming a reality.

 

 

The Kerberos mission set many things in motion.

It was the beginning of the fall of the Empire.

It was the beginning of the rise of Voltron.


	6. Fire: In Shiro's Absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith exhausts himself searching for Shiro and it gets the better of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your comments/kudos!! <3 <3 <3

Keith knows he should sleep. He’s exhausted, both from sleep deprivation and the unsuccessful five hour search for Shiro he just got back from. But he’s too keyed full of energy to rest.

The voices in his head are too loud. The fear is too real.

Shiro’s out there somewhere. The more time that passes, the less likely they’re going to get him back – that _Keith’s_ going to get him back. Tears burn his eyes at the thought.

_I’m not losing him again. I can’t._

The team don’t understand. They don’t get it.

“Begin training sequence.”

Keith lashes out at the gladiator the moment it lands.

The team might know that Keith spent months on end living alone in the desert, but they don’t know just how painful those seemingly endless days were. They don’t know the number of times Keith wished the hollowness in his chest would hurry up and finish consuming him.

They keep saying how they’re struggling without a Black Paladin, but not once have they mentioned how they’re doing without Shiro. It’s like his sudden absence doesn’t affect them.

It makes Keith furious, but he doesn’t want to get angry at them so instead he saves his venting for the training room and expends every scrap he can of it there.

Unfortunately, there’s only so much his body can take before it winds up short-circuiting.

Like now.

He’s not sure when it happens, but it’s like his mind suddenly stops working. The gladiator’s running at him again but Keith’s instincts refuse to kick in and he just lets it hit him.

Again.

And again.

And again.

He can feel the pain but he doesn’t have the strength to react to it. The staff keeps coming down on his back, bruising, winding, jarring. Keith simply lies there, accepting.

He guesses this is what he deserves for ignoring his teammate’s pleas for him to rest.

 

 

The pain colours his vision in black. He’s dimly aware that he’s not being hit anymore.

“..th,…infir..ry..ow!”

There’s too much fog in his brain to hear what they’re saying, but he can see things.

Keith can see the light of his first foster family’s fireplace dancing behind his eyes. He remembers watching them set the wood on fire that night. The lurch of his heart when his imagination made him see his father’s silhouette in the shadows.

“..eith..”

His heart beats far too quickly. Keith stumbles away from the fire. The shadows morph into an unfamiliar shape, one he doesn’t know but who knows him.

His mother, who left him.

Keith screams. He doesn’t know why. His foster parents don’t know why. They think it has something to do with the fire, so they put it out, but Keith continues screaming. He’s unable to tear his eyes away from the blackened wood.

There’s hands on his face, cool hands. His foster mother’s trying to force him to look away, but he refuses, so she raises her voice at him and Keith loses it.

“…ei- !”

He screams and he kicks and the terror builds in his chest as he finds himself restrained in his foster mother’s arms. She thinks it’s helping but it really isn’t. It really isn’t, it –

_God, I can’t breathe!_

“Kei- !”

His throat constricts with panic and his lungs burn and he can’t get enough air. _I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die._

A breath of fresh air passes across his lips and the scene vanishes, giving way to darkness. His heart hammers inside his chest. Something in his brain clicks and he can breathe again, albeit in shallow, desperate gasps.

Someone’s talking to him but he’s not sure who. Keith focuses on it, concentrates on it. Tries to figure out who it belongs to and why the accent is so familiar.

Someone else starts singing and the rhythm of the song slows his heart rate down.

A prick of pain on the inside of his arm and a state of calm begins to wash through the adrenaline.

“…ere you are. Jus…eep breathing, Keith. You’re doing great.”

A gentle hand on his shoulder. A comforting cloak of warmth laid out over him. When he moves his head, what seems to be an oxygen mask bumps against his bicep.

Keith frowns. _Where am I?_

“Hey, man. You with us?”

His head is spinning with fatigue but he forces his eyes open.

A blur of colours and a tilting room. Keith groans, squeezes his eyes shut a moment and tries again.

He’s lying on his side on a bed in the medbay. Pidge – he can tell by her voice – sits behind him, pressing an ice pack against the throbbing bruise on his back. There’s a blanket over him, which is at first confusing, since his shirt is soaked with sweat. Then he realises he’s shivering slightly, although he thinks it’s more from fatigue than being cold, but it could very well be a mix of both.

“How’re you feeling?” Lance asks, voice tight.

Keith pushes himself up so that he’s sitting and removes the mask from his face. He breathes out heavily and slouches forward.

“What happened?”

Pidge lifts the ice pack off the bruise on his back and pokes it. Keith yelps.

“That happened,” she says. “Do you not remember?”

“Um…”

Hunk crouches down beside the bed. “You were passed out on the floor, man. Freaked me out. The gladiator just kept hitting you.”

It’s just the four of them in the room and Keith’s heart aches worse than the bruise when he realises why Shiro’s not here with them. He swallows, trying to suppress the anguish before it shows on his face.

He’s not quick enough.

Pidge sets the ice pack aside and wraps her arms around his shoulders. Keith stiffens, but Pidge’s embrace is in no way restricting. She’s comforting him, he realises with a punch to the stomach. Funny – Pidge never seemed like the sort of person who’d….

Oh. It’s because she knows this pain. She knows exactly what he’s going through because she’s still going through it herself. Keith lost Shiro, got him back and lost him again, but Pidge’s Dad and brother have been missing ever since the Kerberos mission.

Pidge gets it.

Lance joins the hug, being careful not to knock the IV line connected to Keith’s elbow, and Hunk stands up beside him to place a warm hand on Keith’s shoulder.

It’s then that Keith realises that, yeah, they do kind of get it after all. Even if they don’t say it out loud, they’re missing their families, too. Allura is. Coran is. So while the pain burns like fire inside of him, these people will continue supporting him through it.

As the tears start, Keith thinks again of how Shiro asked him to lead the team if anything ever happened to him. For the first time, he considers it.

If leading will allow him to support the team in return, then maybe Keith would be willing to give it a go.

_For Shiro._


	7. Nightmares: In Shiro's Absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #6: Fire, but from Hunk's perspective :)

There’s a continuous whirring sound coming from the training deck. Unsurprising, Hunk thinks, until he realises it’s not met by any ringing of metal.

_That’s strange. Maybe Keith’s practising his stealth skills?_

Hunk almost shrugs it off but decides he’d better go in and check to see that Keith’s okay. He isn’t expecting to find him crumpled on the floor, the gladiator beating him with it’s staff over and over and –

“End training sequence!”

The gladiator pauses, staff raised for another hit. It doesn’t move after that.

But Keith doesn’t move either.

Hunk calls his name and he doesn’t respond.  He calls louder, purposefully makes his footsteps noisier. He makes his shoes squeak on the training room floor but still Keith doesn’t so much as twitch. When he crouches down beside him, he sees why.

Keith’s face is three shades paler than it should be. The lines beneath his eyes span all the way to his cheeks and shadows blooming at the corner of his eyes have a dark purple tint to them.

And he’s unconscious. _Oh no, he’s unconscious._

Hunk brushes Keith’s hair away from his sweaty face and taps him on the cheek. “Keith, buddy. Can you hear me?”

There’s a slight twitch in his fingers when Hunk taps him hard on the collarbone, so he takes that as a means for relief.

“Keith, I’m going to lift you up now, okay?”

It is, if Hunk’s honest, a little gross. Keith’s shirt is drenched in sweat – he had just been training after all – and some of that sweat is dried and giving off a foul odour already. No way near as nice as the smell of baking space cookies but he guesses it’s better than the reek of oil his Dad’s garage would smell like in the summer.

A pang of homesickness washes over him as slides an arm under Keith’s shoulders. It makes him wonder what it will be like to go home to his family at the end of all of this. Presuming, of course, that they will all still be alive at the end of all this.

Yet as he pulls Keith close, his arms tight around his legs and shoulders, he remembers that some of them don’t _have_ anyone to go home to. Pidge’s Dad and brother are still missing, but there’s still her Mum waiting for her. Both he and Lance have their families. But Shiro and Keith… they only have each other.

Hunk tries his best not to cry, but he can’t help it. He looks down at Keith’s face, scarred with night upon night of desperation and grief and fear and helplessness, and there’s nothing he can do to stop himself from crying for them.

The team is all Shiro had to lean on. They’re all Keith has to lean on, but Shiro was his major support beam. Without it, he’s crumbling.

And it’s then Hunk realises that although their thoughts are with Keith, they haven’t exactly been showing it. They’ve been doing things for him, helping him with the searching for Shiro and doing what they can to tell him he’s not alone, but they haven’t spent much time being _with_ him to show him that.

_Why did it have to come to this?_ he thinks. _Does it really take Keith’s health to get this bad for us to notice he’s really not doing well?_

It breaks his heart, knowing he’s guilty of it too.

They’re half-way to the medbay when Hunk crosses paths with Pidge. She halts in her tracks, eyes wide.

“What the quiznak happened to him?” she whispers.

Hunk keeps up the pace, walking fast, but he turns and calls over his shoulder, “I’ll manage with Keith, but can run and get Coran and tell him to meet us in the infirmary – now?”

“Yeah, of course,” Pidge says. She takes of running.

Keith’s not the heaviest, but Hunk’s been carrying him for a solid ten minutes now and it’s starting to hurt Hunk’s arms. He’s a little out of breath but he doesn’t slow down. He can’t afford to. Keith’s still unconscious, meaning it isn’t just a fainting spell they’re dealing with. It’s really bad exhaustion.

There’s only a couple of hundred metres left before they reach the medbay, and that’s when Keith starts twitching.

It starts off as only that – just the odd jump of a muscle in his cheek or the scrunching together of eyelids. But then Keith starts jerking like he’s been shocked and Hunk startles.

“Keith? What’s up? You okay?”

The jerking gets worse. It’s like he’s flinching, hard. Hunk tightens his grip on him and forces himself to walk even faster.

And then Keith screams.

Hunk nearly drops him out of fright. “Keith, what’s wrong?”

He makes it to the medbay and just reaches a bed in the infirmary when the screaming escalates. Keith twists and all but shoves himself out of Hunk’s arms.

But his eyes stay closed. Hunk has to watch him writhe on the bed, shouting, voice hoarse with terror.

“Keith!”

Coran takes over. Hunk stumbles backwards to give him room. Pidge and Lance come in to stand beside him, all three of them staring in horror.

“I think he’s having a nightmare,” Hunk whispers. “I-I don’t know what…”

“It’s okay, Hunk,” Coran says. “You did your part. Now I’ll do mine.”

Allura’s engaged in a meeting on the bridge, so it’s just the five of them. It’s not easy to think what all conscious four of them are thinking: _If only Shiro were here. He’d know what to do._

Coran leans over Keith and puts his hands on the sides of his face. That only seems to freak him out more, though, instead of grounding him. Keith catches Coran in the knee with a kick and proceeds to try to wrestle himself away from the Altean.

“Keith!”

He’s panicking. It makes the rest of them anxious, but Hunk can’t imagine what Keith’s feeling right now. He’s struggling to breathe properly and it only gets worse until he’s hardly getting any air in at all.

Coran gets an oxygen mask set up over his face and only then does the panic start to ease. He breathes a lot easier and the nightmare seems to have finally gone away.

In the next five minutes, Lance fetches a blanket from the store room and Pidge an ice pack, while Coran sets up an IV. Hunk tries talking to him, but he has no idea what to say to Keith in the way of small talk and if he says anything important then he wants to make sure he hears it.

So he sings.

It’s a song his father used to sing when he was cleaning up after a long day’s work in the garage. A song about the coming and going of day, the passing of the seasons and the fleeting feelings each one brings. Keith won’t understand it – it’s not in English – but the emotion carries in the melody anyway.

There’s a soft look in Coran’s eyes as he sings the second verse. Keith appears less tense. When he reaches the last chorus, a series of sniffles behind him tell him that Lance is crying.

“There you are,” Coran murmurs to Keith after Hunk finishes singing. “Just keep breathing, Keith. You’re doing great.”

They roll him onto his side, arm extended to cushion his head. Pidge crawls up behind him and presses the ice pack over where Coran says the bruise is. Lance lays the blanket out over him.

Hunk decides he’s not leaving the room until Keith knows they’re all here for him, until he knows he’s not alone. He says as much to the others, and Coran, recognising it has an opportunity for decent team bonding, quietly leaves the room.

They wait and sure enough, two minutes later, Keith stirs.


	8. Kral Zera: Had Axca Not Stepped In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Commander Gnov was one of Zarkon’s most trusted advisors. She will be unifying Zarkon’s inner circle of Commanders. They know what they’ll get with her. She’s not as reckless as Warlord Ranveig but she’s just as cruel.” - Lotor, Season 5: Episode 4 (Kral Zera).

His heart lurches as his sword slips from his grasp.

_Quiznak._

Keith rolls across the stone staircase. He pulls himself upright but his momentum keeps carrying him backwards. When at last he stops, he propels himself forward with a flick of the ankle and lunges for his blade.

He’s not quick enough. Commander Gnov steps on the blade and grins. Keith tries to yank it out from under foot, but it’s stuck and she’s raising her sword to strike him.

He throws himself sideways, out of the way but tumbling down the staircase.

Lotor and Sendak are still engaged in a scrap of their own. Keith doesn’t have time to see who’s winning, though, because he’s already losing. Gnov is now between him and his sword, hurtling down the steps toward him, which means he’s basically bringing his fists to a knife fight.

_This isn’t going to end well._

Keith clambers to his feet, a little sore from landing on stone over and over. Gnov comes at him.

Unfortunately she’s not so foolish as to try to knock him off his feet, so even when Keith dodges a swipe of her sword, she’s not put off-balance. She spins on one foot, striking sideways. Keith evades. She swings the blade down in a viscous arc. He sidesteps.

Then his foot slips and he’s off balance as well as being weapon-less and on the defensive.

The next blow hits.

Gnov rams the hilt of her sword into the side of his neck. Keith’s shout is cut short as he crashes into the staircase. Gnov is on him in an instant.

Keith’s expecting a killing blow but instead he gets a knee between his shoulder blades. Before he can try to roll out from under her, the Commander grabs a wrist and yanks his arm up behind his back. She slashes at the material of his Blade uniform hood, nicking the back of his neck in the process, and the next thing he knows, she’s pulling his other arm up and securing his hands behind back.

Keith’s heart beats so loud and fast and hard that he finds it hard to breathe. If he couldn’t move before, he can hardly move now and any attempt at landing a kick is useless. At first he doesn’t understand what’s happening, why she’s binding his wrists so tightly, but then he remembers what uniform he’s wearing and who he’s affiliated to and who she is.

_She wants me alive for interrogation._

Gnov grabs him by the shredded remains of his hood, hefts him up and flings him over her shoulder.

There’s no telling what she’ll do to him. There’s no way Keith’s going to tell her anything. She’ll have to kill him first. But if she’s been in Zarkon’s inner circle of Commanders for a long time, she probably has a reasonable connection to Haggar. If he’s handed over to _her_ , to Zarkon’s witch, then it doesn’t matter if he wants to tell them stuff or not – they’ll force it out of him by extracting his memories or something like they did to Shiro.

_Not happening!_

Keith gives it everything he’s got. He kicks, he struggles, he screams all the profanities he knows in a multitude of Earth languages. But all it does is make Gnov irritated and slow her down.

After less than fifteen seconds, she decides she’s had enough. She stops, leans forward and slams him down on the stone. Keith’s vision blacks out. Gnov tears one last strip of material from his hood and binds his ankles with it.

_No, no, no! Quiznak!_

Keith screeches at her, earning him an elbow to the stomach after which he finds he doesn’t have enough breath to yell. She picks him up again and proceeds to carry him off towards wherever he presumes she’s parked her ship.

But she made a mistake: she left his blade on the staircase. The luxite metal just so happens to reflect the moonlight extremely well and it catches the eye of the Red Voltron Lion and her paladin.

They’re halfway down the mountainside, Keith still struggling but with no effect, when the Red Lion blasts Gnov’s ship and sets down in front of it. Gnov gasps, arm around Keith’s torso tightening. She tries to run.

“You’re not taking him anywhere!”

Lance leaps from the Red Lion’s mouth, bayard raised. Dirt erupts at Gnov’s feet. As she turns around to gap it, Keith gets a glimpse of Lance’s face.

He’s furious.

The look on his face is almost feral. Protective. Like a lion defending one of its pride.

Gnov plus sword versus angry Red Paladin plus rifle equals a Commander who knows a fight she’s not going to win. She dumps Keith on the ground and gaps it.

Lance is at his side in an instant. “Keith! What the heck are you doing _here?”_

Two skilled precision shots and Keith’s hands and feet are free. He grunts, letting Lance help him to his feet.

“What does it look like?” he mutters.

“Causing chaos? Getting yourself captured?”

Keith glares at him. “No need to rub it in.”

Lance winces. “Sorry. But seriously, dude – are you okay?”

“Yeah, I will now. Thanks...for saving me just now. I-I was…”

Lance pats him on the shoulder with a small smile. “It’s okay. I’d be pretty scared, too. She looked familiar. What was that Commander’s name?”

“Kolivan said it was Commander Gnov, but I’m not entirely sure. I just remember him showing us some pictures and she happened to be in one of them.”

“Oh, Lotor was talking to us about a few of them, too. He said she was one of Zarkon’s most trusted advisors. It sounds like you sure don’t want to mess around with her.”

Keith’s heart is still pounding. The adrenaline is starting to wear off now, leaving his muscles feeling jelly and his knees weak. It was a close call – too close a call. Five more minutes and he would’ve been on his way to…

The blood drains from his face and his stomach churns. Keith swallows, raises his chin to try keep it down. Bile rises in his throat.

“Woah, _Keith - !”_

He doubles over and throws up. He doesn’t even realise he’s trembling until Lance is lowering him to his knees with his arms around him keeping him steady.

It was never this bad when Zarkon nearly killed him.

After the Trials, after _Naxzela…_

Keith’s not afraid of dying. He’s not scared of risky infiltration missions or dangerous flying or debatable battle tactics. He’s always relied on his instincts, on his ability to get through situations when his fight-or-flight mechanism takes over, so none of those things are very daunting.

But the thought of being trapped, where all his fighting ability is rendered useless…

Keith throws up again. The Red Lion stands guard.                                                                          

The thought of being tied down, restrained, locked up, _tortured_ without any ability to fight back…

“Hey, why don’t you come back to the Castle with me?” Lance says, breaking through Keith’s visualising. “You can chill with us for a bit, then Allura can open up a wormhole and I can take you back to base in Red. How does that sound?”

Keith manages a weak nod.

Ilun and Vrek have probably already left. They wouldn’t wait around for him. Keith’s the one who screwed up the mission, anyway. He made the choice to stay behind and try to stop the bombs.

_‘Then you’ll die with them.’_

Lance is quiet with concern as he guides him into Red. Keith’s heart swells as Red’s familiarity washes over him, but it doesn’t do anything to help with the dread pooling in his stomach.

No one would’ve come after him. Like old times. People never –

But Lance came for him, didn’t he? How many times has Red saved his life doing the same?

Being back at the Castle is a strange mix of planning with Lotor and everyone concerned for Keith. Keith doesn’t know where he fits, but there’s an ache in heart that tells him it’s not here.

Maybe someday he’ll come back, but right now there’s no place for him here. At least, not for the time being.

For now, he belongs with the Blades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After getting Keith settled in Red, Lance went and fetched his Blade of Marmora knife from the staircase.


	9. Hostage: Had Lance Not Been There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alternate ending to the last prompt, Kral Zera: Had Axca Not Stepped In, in which Lance doesn't see Keith's blade on the staircase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so so much for your kudos and amazing comments!!!! :D

 

Gnov goes straight to the bridge. It’s like she’s forgotten about the Blade she captured, the one who still won’t give up trying to wrestle himself free off her shoulder. Keith supposes this is better that being thrown in a dark prison cell, but the fact that he’s been brought to the bridge is much worse of a concern.

The crew await orders. The Commander leans to the side to let Keith drop off her shoulder, simultaneously barking at the crew. His arms jerk the bindings on his wrists. He lands as he falls.

The ship gets itself airborne and they leave the Kral Zera. Even from his position on the floor, Keith can see the flashes of colour down below and it sends a wave of homesickness and resignation through him.

Voltron.

They would’ve come after him. The moment they saw him being carried off by the Commander, they’d have been after him. But they’re not coming. They probably aren’t even aware he was at the Kral Zera, not unless Lotor tells them afterwards.

And Ilun and Vrek will have to tell Kolivan how badly he screwed up, how didn’t make it back to the rendezvous point in time so they left.

Keith tries not to think too hard. Being left behind is one thing. Where he’s being taken to is another.

While Gnov is busy taking the fleet out of range of fire, he keeps up his attempts to get free. It’s not going very well. Since she cut strips from the material of his hood to use, he can’t tear it – the Blade uniform isn’t made to be that weak. She’s tied his wrists more than she has his ankles, but she’s fixed them so tight that there really isn’t any way he can get free by himself. That’s obviously the idea, but it’s frustrating to say the least.

Keith’s left relatively unharmed until, about thirty minutes after the ship took off, Gnov grabs his arm and hefts him up off the floor. His ankles bound, there’s no way for him to get much of a balance – Gnov grasps the back of his neck in the other hand and slams his forehead into the console.

 

People speaking. Keith’s forehead itches with dried blood.

He opens his eyes, one eye only half opening due to the blood running down the right side of his face, and tries to see who’s talking. Commander Gnov is, obviously, but Keith has no idea what she’s saying; his translator is broken and she speaks in a different dialect to Kolivan.

But the words coming from the video feed are ones he knows like his mother tongue…

Keith inhales sharply. That’s because it is.

Shiro, Allura and Coran are standing on the bridge of the Castle. Shiro’s the one doing the talking. He argues back and forth with Gnov, presumably negotiating. Keith struggles to understand what they’re talking about so much, then it dawns on him that he’s in the background of the video – that they can _see_ him.

Bruised and with blood covering half his face.

 _Quiznak._ That means he’s being used as a hostage.

Two foot soldiers are holding him upright, an arm locked around each of his. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but he knows what he feels like.

Gnov says something that sounds like an ultimatum.

Shiro and Coran’s expression morphs into something hard and fearful, and Allura looks furious.

Keith swallows, about to tell Voltron not to worry about him when something cold and circular presses against his neck.

It’s a taser.

A scream tears from his throat. The pain cuts him all over.

Gnov says something. Neither Shiro, Allura nor Coran answer.

 He’s shocked again. Twice.

Keith can’t breathe. His muscles spasm, yanking hard against the restraints.

Three times. Voltron still doesn’t answer.

Keith’s unconscious after the fourth.

 

 

The pain is horrendous. He feels like he’s drowning in it. There’s a lot of noise going on around him and it makes his head spin. He’s so sick to the stomach, Keith thinks he senses Red nearby.

 _You’re dreaming,_ he thinks. _There’s no way…_

The tight pressure on his wrists and ankles vanish. He groans as someone moves his arms, moves him. A muscle in his cheek contracts painfully.

“..ang in the’e, ‘eith. We’re get…you out o’ ‘ere.”

Keith manages to open his eyes a fraction. He sees a blurry image of Lance’s face and a swath of white and yellow colour behind him. Lance pulls an arm over his shoulder and –

The moment his shoulder rubs against the burn on the side of his neck he passes out again.

 

 

It’s cold and it’s blue, but he no longer hurts. There’s a hiss and whoosh and he’s falling, but he falls into warmth and he’s caught by strong arms.

It’s disorientating. Familiar voices. Keith opens his eyes.

Shiro’s holding him upright, but his feet are no longer bound so he can balance on his own two feet…mostly. Behind Shiro are…

“This is the Castle…” he blurts out, confused.

Did he never leave? No, he did – but that was ages ago. Why isn’t he at the Blade of Marmora base? And is that… _Sam Holt,_ and _Matt_?

Lance has a strange look on his face. “Yeah, man. This is the Castle. You were in bad shape so we took you home for a bit. That alright with you?”

Keith glances from face to face. “What…happened?”

“Don’t you remember? You were captured,” Pidge says. “By Commander Gnov.”

Oh, he remembers. He remembers that very well.

“Do you mean how did you get back here?” Hunk offers.

Keith nods.

“Lotor found your knife on his way to light the Kral Zera,” Allura says. “He showed us when we got back to the Castle – he’s at Central Command now – and said it belonged to you. But you’re always carrying it around with you, even when you’re not on Blade missions, so we knew immediately that something was wrong. We had Pidge monitoring the radio transmissions for anything to do with you…then we got a direct transmission from Commander Gnov herself.”

Keith murmurs weakly, “The video…”

“We were able to track you because of it, though. They – ”

“They underestimated the genius that is my sister,” Matt interrupts, grinning. “She traced the call straight back to its origin. Exactly where you were.”

Lance puts his hands in his pockets with a half-smile. “And then we came and got you.”

Keith stares at them, at the worry and the relief on their faces. _They came after me._

He doesn’t know what to say, let alone what to think. He’s spent so long in a culture of mission before the individual, where it’s every man for himself and if one falls behind they get left behind. The culture shock coming back here is too overwhelming for Keith to handle.

“I-I need to be alone for a moment,” he says. “I…”

He drops his gaze to the floor and pushes himself away from Shiro. The silence in the room makes him hesitate, but he can’t think of anything to say and so, as quickly as he can, staggers away from the group and heads for the door.

“Keith, wait up!”

Lance appears at his side. He doesn’t block his way, though, so Keith keeps walking.

“We kept your suit,” Lance says. “It’s a little torn up, but…”

“I have a spare.”

“Cool. Here in the Castle?”

“Yeah.”

Lance hums. “Cool, cool. I’ll walk you back to your room – no ‘buts’, it’s post-cryopod buddy system – and then I’ll go and bring you some food, okay? Hunk did some mean as cooking, so you’re definitely going to want to try some.”

Keith doesn’t have the energy to answer. Lance doesn’t seem to mind.

When they get to Keith’s old room, Lance leaves as he said he would to give Keith privacy while he changes out of the cryopod suit. Keith’s movements are stiff and he’s still a little sore – probably from getting tasered four times – but at least he’s fine, so to speak. When he raises hand to the side of his neck and brushes his fingers of the spot where he got zapped, the skin only feels a little raw as though it were scratched a couple of times.

Keith sighs heavily, finishes dressing and sits down on the edge of his bed.

That’s how Lance finds him: spaced out, arms hanging limply at his sides. Keith leans forward to rest his head on his hands, fingers digging into his hair.

“What’s wrong, Keith?”

He mentally shakes his head but it doesn’t happen in reality. Keith closes his eyes, focuses on keeping his breathing under control and his visualising all the worse things that could’ve and would’ve happened out of his mind. He doesn’t want to know what Gnov planned to do with him…but he _does_ want to know so that he’ll stop imagining all the other possibilities.

“Lance,” he whispers. He hesitates, but then catches sight of his blade on the floor beside the bowl of Hunk’s cooking and it gives him courage. “W-What did…what did Gnov want with me?”

“Hmm? As in why was she trying to make a deal with us?”

“My translator was broken.”

“Well…are you sure you want to hear this? If you don’t remember – sorry, don’t know – wouldn’t it be better – ”

“Just tell me,” Keith grits out.

Lance frowns deeper. “Alright, I will. So Gnov, right? Did Kolivan tell you about her?”

“He did.”

“Right, so you know who she is then. She figured that, since you’re a Blade, you wouldn’t tell her anything even if she tortured you for information.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah. But she also knows you’re affiliated with Voltron, with us, so she tried using you to get answers from us instead.”

Keith hisses a curse.

“She was going to take you to Haggar next. That was her threat, if we didn’t consent to Gnov’s terms. But we operate on terms of our own. As soon as the video ended, Allura opened up a wormhole for Hunk and I and we went in and got you.”

Keith nods numbly. He wants to say thank you and he knows he should, but the words get stuck in his throat. Thankfully Lance seems to understand that he’s a little bit in shock.

His mind’s still reeling with how much of a close call that all was.

“You going to be alright?” Lance asks.

Keith lifts his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he whispers.

 


	10. Loner: Or So They Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the prompts 6. Fire and 7. Nightmares, Keith's shattered.

Hunk helps Keith to the showers after the IV finishes. Pidge gets the fun job of taking his boots back to his room and Lance runs ahead to fetch Keith some fresh clothes.

After Keith’s hopped into the shower stall and passed his really-needing-a-wash clothes under the stall door, Hunk goes to wait in the laundry room which is between the showers and the hallway. He’s just putting Keith’s clothes through a wash cycle when there’s a knock at the outside door.

“Delivery!”

Lance slides the door open. He hands Hunk a pile consisting of shorts, underwear and a red Altean robe. Hunk raises his eyebrow. Would Keith even want to wear this?

“I couldn’t find anything else,” Lance says. “I mean, we all came here with only the clothes on our backs – except for Pidge – so it’s not like we have a lot of spares floating around.”

Hunk frowns. “That’s going to be a problem if we have any more times like this.”

It sounds as though he’s specifically meaning Keith and he can’t help feel a little guilty for the way that just came out. Lance doesn’t seem to notice.

“Didn’t Coran say they had a clothes-replicator or something?”

“I think he said it only worked with clothes made from Altean patterns. I’m not sure. Pidge is keen to have a go getting it to work for other templates, it’s just that we’ve been so busy fighting and strategizing that she hasn’t really had the time.”

Lance nods. “Fair enough. Hopefully Keith doesn’t mind.”

“It’ll only be for half an hour at most, anyways.”

The shower is still going. Hunk wonders if he should be worried or not, but it just sounds like Keith’s taking his time. He wasn’t able to walk very fast and he most certainly isn’t well enough to function at his normal speed, so it makes sense that his movements would be a little sluggish.  

“Alright,” Lance says. “I’ll leave you to it. I was thinking we could all use a break, so…if Keith’s up to it, maybe ask if he wants to come join in a Paladin hang out in the lounge?”

Hunk gives him a half smile. “Yeah, I’ll ask him.”

He highly doubts Keith wants company right now. Keith, the loner, the tough guy, just broke down in front of all of them – mentally and physically. Hunk wouldn’t be surprised if all Keith wants to do right now is curl up in bed and hide for the next day or two.

If that happened, Hunk would bring him food, of course. They’d check up on him, make sure he’s okay…

“Cool,” Lance says. “I might see you soon.”

Hunk grabs a basket and places the clothes in there with a towel folded on top. He enters the shower room and sets the basket down by the stall door where Keith can reach it.

“You alright in there?” he calls.

The shower keeps running.

“Keith?”

A hiccup. “’m fine.”

Hunk isn’t convinced. “You sure?”

“I’ll be out in a sec, just…just give me a minute.”

There’s a terrible strain to Keith’s voice. Hunk can’t believe he didn’t notice earlier, how badly Keith was falling apart inside. He’d mistaken his refusal to rest as stubbornness and desperation, not once considering the possibility that Keith was afraid of what might happen – to himself – should he stop.

This…this is what Keith was afraid of.

The shower stops. Hunk waits patiently in the laundry, ears pricked in case there’s any sign of Keith passing out again. Thankfully that doesn’t happen, and Keith emerges from the shower room relatively fine.

_Good heavens…_

His wet hair and the dark red of the Altean robe make him look like a zombie. It doesn’t help that Keith’s face is a little off colour, but… that’s sleep deprivation if he’s ever seen it. Keith’s barely able to stand still very long without swaying.

Hunk helps him back to his room on unsteady feet. There’s a few times where Keith’s knees give way, but Hunk’s there with his arm locked around Keith’s, supporting him.

“So,” Hunk says when they finally reach their destination. “Lance is setting up a chill session in the Paladin lounge. Do you want to come hang out?”

Keith studies his bare feet. “I, um…”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I totally get it if you just want to be by yourself right now. We’re just going to be lazing around anyways.”

Hunk can’t decipher what it is that passes across Keith’s face. In the end the answer to his question is no, but as Keith opens the door and looks into the inviting darkness of his room, the blood rushes from his face and he sways.

_Oh no._

“Woah, Keith. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” he whispers hoarsely.

It shows on Keith’s face how much he regrets letting those words – letting that _truth_ – slip out. Though he hastily tries to wipe away the evidence, it’s too late; the dam has burst. The last wall protecting his vulnerability is gone, leaving him exposed.

Hunk pulls him into hug. “Let’s go join the others then, eh?”

Keith breaks down sobbing, struggling to breathe again. It stabs Hunk in the heart.

How much grief has this guy been hiding from them all?

How much stress has he been under trying to act like Shiro’s disappearance isn’t affecting him as much as it is?

All this time…just how badly has this guy needed a hug?

When they enter the Paladin lounge, Lance takes one look at Keith’s dripping hair and goes off to get a towel. Pidge pats a vacant space on the floor next to her. She’s got a massive nest of blankets all set up for them all. Coran’s already half-asleep at the other end.

Hunk helps Keith down by Pidge, then heads off to warm up some food for them all. He crosses paths with Allura on the way back and manages to convince her to join them too.

Half an hour later, Lance and Pidge are playing cards with Allura and Coran, and Keith’s fast asleep leaning against Hunk’s side, a blanket pulled up over him.

Hunk’s deep in thought. They’ve labelled Keith as a loner for far too long. Yes, he prefers the quiet and time to himself, but there’s a difference between that and isolation. Just because he’s awkward about physical contact doesn’t mean he doesn’t crave it.

And while Keith didn’t ask, no one really asked him either. They all just assumed Keith was fine by himself and didn’t really think to ask if he way okay.

In conclusion, Keith’s not the loner everyone thought he was.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff is hard to write... :P


	11. Abandoned: Too Many Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last part to Fire/Nightmares/Loner. Keith opens up to the team about his past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've merged Fire/Nightmares/Loner/Abandoned into a single fic so that it can be read as a whole. It's Part 2 of what I've called the KWmonth (Keithtober x Whumptober) series, if you're looking for it! 
> 
> I'll do the same with Kral Zera/Hostage/... when it's finished too :)

It’s late when Keith wakes, disorientated. The side of his face is pressed into Hunk’s shoulder, he’s lying on the floor in the Paladin lounge and Lance is saying something about packing up because it’s almost midnight.

_When did we…?_

Oh, right. The scene he caused earlier.

Keith yawns, pushes himself away from Hunk. It’s a mission just keeping his eyes open, and he’s fairly sure the shadows beneath them aren’t a pretty sight, but he’s awake…at least for now.

“Hey, Keith,” Pidge says, flashing him an amused grin.

“Hi,” he croaks.

Lance pauses in packing away the card game they were playing. “You feeling okay?”

Keith grunts. “No.” _Really wish I hadn’t cried._

“Do you…do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“It’s just that, I dunno, it might help you process things? Maybe now’s not the best time; you look absolutely shattered. But yeah…um…”

“We were talking about it about an hour or so ago,” Hunk supplies. “Saying how you don’t seem to be doing well at all since Shiro disappeared. We hadn’t realised…you’re quite close with Shiro, aren’t you?”

Keith crosses his legs in front of himself and slouches. “He’s like a brother to me. I don’t have any other family.”

He bites his lip. He shouldn’t have said that. Now everyone’s stopped what they’re doing, concerned, and they’re going to start asking questions. But they don’t. They wait for Keith to decide whether he wants to elaborate or not. At first he resents the idea, then thinks twice about it.

This might be the only opportunity like this that he has to tell them.

_May as well get it over and done with._

“So,” Keith says. “I, um… my Mum, she left me. That’s why I didn’t know I had any Galra in me. She left before I knew her, and there were no photos of her around the house so I never even knew – I don’t even know – what she looks like. Dad said he’d tell me about Mum when I was older but he… he never got the chance.”

Keith’s voice pitches on the last few words. He fights to get it back under control but chokes on a sob instead.

“My Dad was a firefighter,” he says. “When I was eight, he…”

The tears spill over. Keith sucks in a breath and hastily wipes at his eyes. His hands are shaking.

“And now Shiro. He’s the closest thing to family I’ve had in years. He’s the only one who never gave up on me. Everyone else did. Apparently I’m too much of a discipline case to deserve second chances. ‘Kogane obviously doesn’t want help,’ they said, ‘so just leave him be.’”

_God…why am I crying so much?_

Lance’s shoulders drop. “Shiro’s the only one who stuck by you, wasn’t he?”

Keith nods.

“And now he’s gone.”

Coran hands him a box of Altean tissue cloth. As Keith takes it and raises a tissue over his nose, he notices Lance and Hunk exchange a cautious glance. Keith blows his nose with greater force than necessary.

“I’m gonna fin’ him,” he says thickly. “I don’t care what you think. I’m gonna find ‘im.”

Pidge shoots Lance a glare. “And we’ll help you where we can.”

The elephant in the room persists, however, and it’s Allura who brings it up.

“And what if we can’t find?”

Keith swipes a fist beneath his eyes. “Then we keep looking.”

“What I mean is, - ”

Pidge twists around to face her. “ _Allura.”_

“- what if we _can’t_ find him? What if he can’t come back to us?”

Keith hisses. “Shiro was the one person who never gave up me! I’m sure as _hell_ not giving up on him!”

Allura opens her mouth to try to argue her point but Keith can’t take anymore. He digs his fingers into the tissue box, stands up and hurls it at her.

The tissue box misses, just. He intended it to. Allura stands up slowly, like a cat with its fur on end. 

It’s too much. He’s too exhausted. He’s seeing red.

They’d abandon Shiro that easily, huh?

They’d abandon _Shiro…_ that easily?

They’ll throw Keith out the first chance they get.

_I can’t lead. I can’t lead._

A horrible torrent of emotions surge through him. Keith screams, heartbeat accelerating.

He wants to run but he can’t. Lance has his arms locked around him.

“Keith, we’ll find him.”

Keith’s chest heaves, panic rising. He tries to shove Lance away but he won’t let go.

Allura mutters something under her breath.

Pidge snaps. “With all due respect, Princess… _shut up._ ”

Keith’s struggling to breathe. His eyes are stretched wide, seeing but not looking. Lance keeps a firm hold on him.

“You don’t think that hasn’t crossed Keith’s mind already? You don’t think it hasn’t crossed mine? Every _day_ I’m looking for my family. All my efforts could very well be in vain, but do you think for one _second_ – that’s a tic, by the way, Princess – that I’m going to give up searching for them?

“You know, my Dad has this saying: ‘if you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss the chance to do something great.’ In other words, if we get too caught up in thinking there’s no way of finding out what happened to Shiro, he could die out there and not make it all because _we gave up._ We’re supposed to be ‘defenders of the universe’, aren’t we? Pretty hypocritical saying that if we give up on each other so easily.”

Hunk wraps his arms around Keith and Lance’s shoulders. Keith’s sobbing, hard. Hunk rubs a hand over his back.

Pidge swears and joins in the hug.

A moment of tense quiet. Coran coughs.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Allura whispers.

There’s not enough room for them to join in to, but Keith would rather they didn’t. Allura, at least.

The air is heavy when they all go to bed that night. Keith stays in the Paladin lounge, needing some space. After Coran double checks to make sure that he’s relatively physically okay, Keith’s left alone.

He sinks back down into the blankets. _I am such a wreck._

Pidge comes back into the lounge five minutes later with her laptop tucked under her arm.

“You going to sleep out here?” she asks.

Keith shrugs.

“Mind if I join you for a bit? I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

“If you want.”

The walls are coming back up again, but Keith is too tired to maintain them for long. As Pidge makes herself comfy on the floor nearby, Keith turns and lies down with his back to her.

_Hopefully she won’t think I’m being rude._

But Pidge is tapping away at the keyboard a second later, lost in whatever train of thought she’s entered. It’s not a harsh tapping, and the rhythm is fairly consistent, so he closes his eyes and lets himself drift.

He’s almost asleep when he feels someone drapes a blanket over him.

Keith’s out like a light after that, exhausted.

 

When he wakes up in the morning, there’s a neatly folded pile of his clothes by his head.

 

 


	12. Cryopods: Post-hostage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third part of Kral Zera/Hostage/Cryopods/.... 
> 
> Lance and Hunk rescue Keith and Lance stays with Keith in the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everyone!! I never thought these prompts would be enjoyed so much :O 
> 
> Thank you for all your comments and kudos!! <3 <3 <3 <3

The moment they leave their Lions, Lance and Hunk open fire. Anything standing between them and Keith gets blasted – sentries, walls, doorways, and a Commander whose earnt the rare rage of Hunk.

Except it’s not Hunk who takes the last shot.

Commander Gnov has an arm locked around Keith’s neck. It’s the only thing keeping him upright. She’s using her hostage as a shield this time, not just a bargaining chip.

With her free arm she presses a gun to his head. “Surrender, or he dies.”

Lance pulls the trigger before Gnov can pull hers. She yelps. The arm around Keith’s neck loosens and the gun drops from her other hand. Keith drops too, on his face.

“Hunk!”

The signal. Hunk whirls around, eyes wild, and barrels into Gnov. Before she even has a chance to trip over Keith’s bound feet, Hunk brings the side of his bayard into her head.

Lance ducks beneath a sentry’s shot and hastily drags Keith out of the way. Gnov falls down beside him. Hunk takes down the last two sentries.

The silence that falls is unnerving. Lance’s heart races as he quickly scans the room, making sure there’s no one about to get the jump on them. Hunk confirms that there isn’t, so with the danger out of the way, Lance turns his attention back to Keith.

Dried blood cakes the right side of his face. The gash on his forehead isn’t bleeding, but it’s accompanied by a nasty bruise and swelling. There’s an angry burn on the side of his neck.

Lance shoots through the bindings on his wrists and ankles. Hunk deactivates his bayard and kneels on the floor beside them.

“Keith,” Hunk says loudly. “Can you hear me?”

Keith twitches. His fingers spasm.

“Lance and I are going to get you out of here now, okay?”

A jerk of the knee.

Lance shuffles around so that he can keep an eye on their exit, then helps Hunk roll him onto his back. Keith groans as they move his arms out of the way. Lance is startled by how tense he is.

“Hang in there, Keith,” he says. “We’re getting you out of here.”

A muscle in Keith’s cheek jumps. Lance slides an arm beneath his shoulders and lifts him up. As he goes to sling Keith’s arm over his own shoulders, Keith’s eyes open a fraction, but then his breath hitches and he fades again.

Lance’s stomach churns. He bites back a swearword and saves his breath for hauling an unconscious Keith off the ground.

“Actually, Hunk, can you take him? I’ll watch your back.”

Hunk gives him the thumbs up. “Sure thing, man.”

The run back is fairly unhindered. They meet three sentries near their exit point, but Lance takes them down before they can shoot and Hunk continues on past them.

When their Lions, Hunk piggybacks Keith into Red then darts back out into the enemy ship on his way to Yellow.

“Don’t wait for me,” Hunk yells. “Just get him back to the Castle!”

“I’ll wait till you’re back in Yellow.”

“I’m in now. Go!”

Lance doesn’t hang around. Neither does Red.

Yellow blows up the ship before chasing them through the wormhole.

 

Coran brings a stretcher into the Red Lion’s cockpit, and together he and Lance load Keith onto it. The stretcher is wide enough to accommodate for Keith’s twitching and the way his body seizes up with cramps, so they don’t bother securing him. They just get him to the cryopods.

Everyone’s gathered in the Red Lion’s hangar. Lance doesn’t wait around to read their expressions. He already knows what he’ll find there.

Keith doesn’t return to consciousness. He’s responsive at least, but that’s only when Coran touches the burn on his neck.

Lance and Shiro work at swapping Keith’s torn Marmora suit with a cryopod one. There’s bruises all over Keith’s body, the darkest of them a boot-sized one on his stomach and the one accompanying the cut on his forehead.

Once they’re done, Coran takes a damp cloth and cleans all the dried blood off his face, then he’s in.

Hunk arrives in the room ahead of them, just as the pod closes over.

“He’ll be alright, now. Won’t he?”

Lance takes a deep breath and exhales sharply. “I hope so, but… I don’t know.”

Shiro goes to let Pidge and Allura know they can come in. Coran monitors the first stage of the healing process.

“Come on,” Hunk says. “Let’s get out of our armour. We can come straight back.”

Lance watches Keith a moment longer before he relents.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know.”

The words are almost inaudible, but when Keith whispers them, Lance hears them. It sends a chill down his spine. Automatically he goes to wrap his arms around him, then remembers it’s Keith and remembers the situation they just pulled him from and thinks twice.

“Can I hug you?” he asks quietly.

The sound Keith makes is heart-wrenchingly close to a whimper. He ducks his head in a nod and Lance extends an arm and shifts a little closer. Keith leans into it and lets out a shuddering breath.

They sit in silence for a while, Lance rubbing a hand up and down Keith’s upper arm like he’d do with his niece and nephew back on Earth, and just like them, Keith loses the tension in his shoulders and gradually begins to relax.

“How long…how long was I in the pod for?” he murmurs eventually.

Lance hums. “Sixteen hours. Coran said you’d likely be feeling a little stiff and weak for the next few days but that it should wear off in about a movement.”

Keith closes his eyes and doesn’t say comment.

Before he can drift off to sleep, though, Lance insists he eat. He’s had experience with post-cryopod fatigue and even with food in his stomach it wasn’t all that pleasant. He’d hate to think what Keith would feel like waking up post-cryopod with no food in his stomach and his body still healing from the being electrocuted.

He stays with Keith after he’s eaten and stays with him until he’s fallen asleep, both for his own reassurance and for Keith’s. Lance doesn’t know how long it’ll he’s okay, but if there’s one thing he’s learnt in the last hour, it’s that Keith will often say he’s fine when he’s not.

_“I-I need to be alone for a moment…”_

And yet when Lance offered him a hug, he was desperately needing one – _wanting_ one, even.

_You’re not alone, Keith. I promise you, you’re not alone._

He only hopes that he knows.

 

(Keith doesn’t.)

 

 


	13. Discipline Case: Everyone Calls Him That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't really think of anything to write for this prompt so this is a short one!

Keith walks out of the Garrison for the last time and slams the door shut behind him.

There’s no going back. Not now, not ever. They don’t want him, best pilot or not. All he is to them is a discipline case, just as he’s been to everybody in his life except his Dad, Shiro and maybe his mother.

_Mum probably knew I’d be too much of a handful,_ he thinks. _That’s why she left. So she didn’t have to put up with me._

Shiro’s gone. Keith doesn’t believe for one second that it’s due to pilot error and therefore he can’t force himself to believe that Shiro’s dead, either. It’s highly unlikely he’ll be coming back to Earth, but that’s as far as Keith will let himself think.

Then there’s his Dad. Even if he wouldn’t have tolerated Keith’s anger issues, but he would’ve at least been able to help him through them. He’d have asked Keith what the matter was and actually _listened_. He’d have helped him understand what the root of it all was and help him find a way to deal with it better.

But no one cares. The only ones who did are long gone.

_Who Keith?_ The displeasure in the teacher’s voice. _That kid’s just a discipline case._

_The only reason this kid is here is because you vouched for him._

_Is that what Mummy and Daddy told you before they –_

_…failure of the Kerberos mission due to pilot error…_

_Kogane, that’s one strike too many! Get out of this building!_

Maybe Keith wouldn’t be so full of frustration and fire had people actually been kind to him.

 

 


	14. Desert: The Voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeee another short one - I'll be back to writing more as of tomorrow's prompt! :)

 

The solitude isn’t what consumes him out in the desert – the loneliness does.

What starts off as a painful tug in his chest quickly becomes a black hole. There’s no end to it and it keeps on taking. In the heat of the day it exhausts his ability to stay positive and in the cold of night it robs him of all emotions but fire.

_If fire’s even an emotion._

The only reprieve is that voice in the back of his head telling him to search.

No matter how close Keith comes to giving up on himself and no matter how much he wants to at times, that voice keeps telling him he mustn’t. That there’s something he must do, something that’s much greater than himself.

He doesn’t understand it but he decides to go along with it and that’s what leads him to the cave. There’s only that one, mind, which has any drawings carved in it. Most of the drawings are old and caked in dirt, but there’s a few that look like they’ve had someone scrape away at the dirt in recent decades, to get a better look at the drawings.

One of them depicts some sort of arrival happening. A prophecy. It’s dated…to less than a year from now. At least, that’s when those constellations will be back in the sky at that orientation.

It’s the first thing Keith’s had to look forward to in months.

Registering the newfound hope in his heart, the voice almost seems to purr.

 

 


	15. Last Words: Knowledge or Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fourth part to Kral Zera/Abandoned/Cryopods/Last Words: what could've happened had no one come for Keith.

The pressure is tight around his wrists again. He tries to push himself off the table but his ankles are secured as well.

Keith tries not to panic. _Patience yields focus._

He has to get himself out of here. No one else will. Nobody’s going to risk putting themselves in danger to come and get him; the Blades abandoned him for a reason. It’s his own fault he’s here.

No matter how much he struggles, the cuffs don’t give. They’re not meant to. But Keith tries nonetheless because _Haggar…_

The interrogation room doors open. Keith fixes his expression into a glare. Haggar doesn’t react. If the two druids floating behind her do, he can’t tell.

“You can give me the information I want to know willingly,” the witch says. “I will give you the opportunity now. Where are the Blade of Marmora centralised?”

Keith maintains his glare and says nothing. His heart hammers inside his chest.

“You have a dobash before the offer no longer stands. Where are the Blade of Marmora centralised?”

He focuses on his clenched fists in his peripheral, the purple glow of the bindings around his wrists. He concentrates on breathing, on the pain of clenching his jaw.

Haggar doesn’t bother with a countdown.

The electricity turns on. Keith screams.

It stops.

The witch raises an eyebrow, waits, then moves her hand up the console.

White fills his vision. His throat burns. His body convulses.

It vanishes.

“I don’t have patience,” Haggar mutters. “This is your last warning. You will have no choice the next time I ask you.”

Keith struggles for air. Somehow, through the pain, he grits out, “Knowledge or death.”

A snort. “How fitting.”

The world whites out again and Keith almost blacks out, but Haggar stops the electricity before it can happen. He wishes she hadn’t. The nausea is horrible and he has to stay awake for it now.

A mechanical whirring sounds behind him and he’s being tilted backwards. He wants to be sick. The table comes to rest at a thirty-degree angle, at which time the druids position themselves on either side.

Keith’s shaking now, hard – from electrocution and from fear. His whole mouth feels numb and he realises he couldn’t speak even if he wanted. He literally has no choice anymore. They’re going to take what they want from him by force.

Right here, right now.

The druids raise their hands over him. A dark whirl of energy materialises in their palms and spreads out between the two of them in a web of magic. They murmur something and it flares a bright pink.

“Proceed,” Haggar says.

As the witch comes over to join them, the druids lower the spell. It burns. Then Haggar raises her hands and closes her eyes and Keith knows it’s over.

Knowledge or death. It’s not his choice now.

Pain flares in his head. He can’t see anything. The witch’s magic breaks down every single one of his mental fortifications. He hears her ask something and Keith’s stomach drops. His mind goes to answer it unwillingly.

_“Keith.”_

_No no no, get out of my head!_

The memory of whose voice it is threatens to surface. Keith throws all his consciousness against it, tries to force it back down.

_“Keith!”_

He knows that voice… he wants to go towards it…

_No! If I think about it, Haggar will know about it. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!_

“…just a dream.”

_No, go away. She can’t know!_

“Keith – ”

_Go away!_

“KEITH!”

He lurches upright. It’s dark, he can’t breathe, there’s _other people in the room –_

The light comes on and a hand waves in from of him. He blinks. It’s Lance’s hand. Keith chokes on a gasp and looks around.

Pidge is standing by the light switch. Matt appears in the doorway with Shiro. Hunk’s standing on the other side of Lance, eyes wide in… horror?

A hand on his sweat-drenched back. “It’s okay, Keith. It was just a dream. A really, really bad dream.”

Keith’s eyes flick to Lance. He stares at him, unable to process what that means. This can’t be real. That can’t have been a nightmare. Haggar’s just using his hopes to get to him, to extract what information she wants from him easier.

But then Lance hugs him, and his thought processes stall.

He can see the concern in everyone’s eyes. Shiro has bags under his eyes and Matt’s wearing clothing he shouldn’t remember so much detail if he only saw it yesterday. He can also see every strand of Lance’s hair and his shadow falling across the wall behind him.

There’s more footsteps coming into the room – Sam’s. Keith can hear the Holts and Shiro talking in low tones to each other. Lance’s breathing. The rustling of clothes as Keith lets himself be pulled closer into the hug.

The feel of the blanket he’s clutching tightly, the warmth of someone with their arms around him and the steady hand rubbing up and down his back.

The smell of hair products and a recently washed jacket.

The taste of iron in his mouth from a bleeding lip.

_This is real._

Keith has to hide his face in Lance’s jacket before he breaks down crying.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking I want to write one more prompt for this before I post these chapters (Kral Zera/Abandoned/Cryopods/Last Words) as a seperate fic. So there will be comfort for Keith before he goes back to the Blade of Marmora! :)


	16. Alien Planet: Ambushed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kolivan, Keith and Ilun are ambushed on a Blade mission shortly after leaving their ship.

A few tics before the clearing erupts in noise, Keith’s head snaps to the side. Kolivan sees the warning too late.

Blaster fire.

Kolivan ducks, only to be shot in the foot. Keith dances out of the way and cuts down one of the masked figures camouflaging themselves in the planet’s vegetation. Ilun is already gapping it.

Their ship is parked a mere sprint away, but it’s breaking away from the fight that proves to be difficult. They’re outnumbered six-to-one, nine-to-one without Ilun. They’re also at a disadvantage; their assailants had been waiting for them and had come prepared.

 _Although their organisation could’ve been better,_ Kolivan thinks as he swipes his blade across someone attempting to tackle him. _How many folk does it take to catch a Blade?_

Keith cries out. Kolivan doesn’t glance over. From what it sounds like, Keith was able to get away from the centre of fight, meaning he’s headed for the ship and not lingering to fight any more battles than necessary – including Kolivan’s.

 _Good,_ he thinks. Pain explodes in his forearm.

He’ll hold his own. That’s what Blades do.

Kolivan’s downfall ends up being his attire – his distinguished clothing marks him, and so naturally he’s the one most of the alien inhabitants gravitate towards. He’s taking on eleven opponents, two of which he’s felled and the remaining nine of which he’s too busy trying to avoid getting seriously wounded by to get to. He knows the tic he turns his back they’ll all shoot him down. His only option here is to fight them all and hope he gets back to the ship in time.

But Ilun’s already powering up the ship. Keith’s nowhere to be heard, presumably also in the ship.

_Good, he’s listening._

Kolivan gets shot in the face.

 

 

His mask is down. Face bruised, but otherwise seemingly fine.

Someone’s carrying him. A strange sensation for a Blade who always stands on his own two feet. It’s dizzying and alarming all at once, especially when Kolivan remembers who shot him.

_Oh no…_

But when he opens his eyes and sees the slate-grey dirt moving beneath him, he also sees the familiar purple of Blade uniform and a pair of small, round-toed feet.

It’s Keith.

Kolivan grimaces. “What’re you doing?”

Keith trudges onwards, gasping for air. His mask is up so Kolivan can’t see his expression, but he can feel, in the strong grip on his upper back and back of his knees, the fierce determination that must be burning in the boy’s eyes.

Up ahead, Ilun shouts. Keith’s shoes hit the ramp of the ship. He growls and presses on, up… up…up…

They’re inside the ship. Keith exhales sharply, drops to his knees. The ship doors seal close. Kolivan falls off Keith’s shoulders, landing on his legs. There’s a thud and a groan.

Ten tics later they’re airborne.

It takes the better half of a dobash before Kolivan’s able to open his eyes without the ceiling spinning in his dizziness. He sits up slowly, forehead throbbing. Breathing slowly, Kolivan waits out the fresh wave of dizziness before turning to Keith and deactivating his mask.

He’s passed out, breathing ragged. Paler than usual, cheeks flushed red.

Anger churns in Kolivan’s stomach.

There’s blaster burns all over his back. A cut across his arm. Sweat soaking into the hair at the back of his neck and temples. A swollen ankle, probably sprained.

Kolivan, in contrast, is hardly touched.

_You broke protocol. You suffered for it._

And yet he prevailed. Keith, by far the youngest and shortest Blade they’ve seen in a long time, took it upon himself to go back into the fray, fend off at least eight or nine foes and then proceed to carry someone almost twice his height and three times his weight all the way back to the ship while wounded.

Kolivan wants to be furious that he broke protocol _again_ , so soon after losing Regris… but maybe that’s what spurred Keith on. Maybe that’s what got him back in time, with Kolivan. Keith’s lost many people, despite being so young, so the thought of losing yet another…

Keith comes to as the ship docks back at headquarters half a varga later. His eyes are glazed over in pain, but he recognises Kolivan and fails to keep the relief from his expression. Kolivan gives him a hard look, but Keith just smiles and closes his eyes again.

Ilun accompanies them down to the medbay, though she herself is uninjured. Keith is unsteady on his feet but somehow manages to walk most of the entire way without keeling over. Kolivan isn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned.

As he thinks about it, Kolivan wonders if it’s a human thing – to not want to leave people behind. He’d always thought it was a Paladin thing, but considering the fact that all the current Voltron team share human blood, besides Allura, it could be a matter of culture coming into play as well. A curious culture, and a confusing one by what Kolivan’s heard of it, but one that requires a great amount of courage.

And courage, while it can be misplaced, is an invaluable war asset.

 

After Keith has been treated by medical, Kolivan sits down with him, intending to give him a stern talking to. It never really happens.

“While I will not call you a fool,” Kolivan murmurs, “I will not hesitate to call your actions reckless. The mission is more important the individual. I will repeat this to you as many times as it takes for it to get inside your head.”

Keith grunts. “We’re waging a war against a ten-thousand year old Empire, seriously outnumbered and not even all that co-ordinated. Isn’t that pretty reckless in itself?”

_“This is not a fair fight!” Shiro protests._

_“Neither is facing the Galra,” Kolivan says, “yet that is the fight we face.”_

It’s not the first time he’s had his own words used against him. The first and only other time it’s happened was during a transmission made from Planet Earth a little over a couple of decapheobs ago.

_Like mother, like son…_

For once, Kolivan finds himself at a loss for words. Keith’s right, and perhaps Kolivan could learn a thing or two regarding perspective from him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... to be continued :)


	17. Red Lion: Perception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Red have some bonding time after the Trials of Marmora.

_They know._

Keith doesn't want to think about it too much. Red seems to think he's overthinking it already. She's known all along, since the day they first met, the moment they bonded.

But Keith's gone over eighteen years not knowing about the other half of his heritage...

He rubs his eyes and settles down on the floor of the cockpit. It's not exactly comfy, but he's wearing his own clothes and it's dark and it's quiet here. The wound on his shoulder flares with pain every second minute, but it's nothing compared to the emotional strain he's under.

_I can't just accept this, Red. I thought I knew who I was, but I don't know who I am anymore._

_You. Same._

_Same as...?_

_You._

_I don't understand what you're getting at._

A vision swirls behind his eyes. Keith opens his mind up to it.

An unfamiliar place. The night sky is vibrant, the atmosphere so transperant it feels like he could fall upward. Later, he and Red will take a flight together up there, and his soul longs to do so right now, but first he must -

He's sitting at a table, a great dining table, all kinds of noblemen and noblewomen seated around. They're all looking at him, waiting. Keith doesn't know these people but Red somehow does, and so he stands and addresses them with the voice of a king.

Keith jolts back to himself with a gasp. "Those were King Alfor's memories," he whispers, "and yours."

Red purrs. She nudges his mind, prompting him.

"What...?"

_I have shown you._

Keith grits his teeth against a stab of pain in shoulder. He really should've taken that second dose of pain relief Coran offered him.

_Paladin._

_Red, I'm sorry. I can't think straight right now. I don't understand what you're trying to get me to understand._

_Keith_.

_What?_

_Alfor._

_Yes, what about him?_

_King._

_Red -_

"Keith? You in there?"

He groans. His headache is bad enough as it is without having to listen to anything. Moreover, Keith's not in a mood for a lecture.

"It's okay if you'd rather be alone," Shiro calls. "I understand. I just want to come by and make sure you're okay every now and then."

_Galra blood._

_Not now, Red._

_Little brother._

"Keith?"

He sighs. "Better let him in."

A few seconds later, Shiro's coming in through the cockpit doors, a massive blanket draped over his shoulders like a cape and an armful of medical supplies and space juice. A couple of ration bars slip from his grasp as he lowers the stuff to the floor.

Keith stares at Shiro, astonished. "What...is...?"

Shiro flashes him a tired grin. "Thought you might be wanting to camp out here for a while so I brought you a few necessities."

"But I... "

"...you?"

Keith swallows. He curls his fingers into the material of his jacket.

He can't say it. It's always been a rule: if Keith's hungry, then he has to come to the dinner table to eat or else he gets nothing. No food in the bedrooms, even if he's sick. He has to understand that his foster parents are stressed enough as it is having to put up with his behaviour on top of their running a business. He needs to learn to pull his own weight; he can't expect people to want to do things for him.

Shiro shakes out the blanket and lays it out over his legs. He crouches down again and organises the stuff he brought in so that the most important things are easily within arm's reach (bandages, gauze and hand sanitizer, painkillers and hydrating space juice) and the not so urgent things (snacks, extra medical supplies and water pouches) are behind them.

_Keith. Paladin. Human-Galra. Friend. Little brother._

"I'll be back in a few hours," Shiro says. "We're about to get started on putting a plan together with Kolivan, but it's going to take quite a bit time. I'll come back and make sure you're okay, make sure your shoulder is getting better and not worse, as soon as I can." He reaches out and lays a hand on Keith's uninjured shoulder. "Call me if you're not feeling well, okay? Even if it's because you want a bit of company."

Keith is too numb to answer. He just looks at Shiro and tries to process the fact that finding out Keith's part Galra hasn't changed Shiro's perception of him.

When Shiro leaves, Keith lies down and curles up beneath the blanket. He bunches the ends of it together to make a small pillow and closes his eyes.

Red reassures him that nothing has changed, only his perception of himself. She sends him a vision of a lamp glowing with the flame of a single candle, a soft darkness and a soothing light.

Keith falls into an exhausted sleep as Red embraces him with her mind.

 

 

 


	18. Leadership: In Voltron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of Season 6, Keith's exhaustion catches up to him and he learns again what it means to be leader of Voltron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update on related ficlets!: I'm combining the connected prompts into seperate fics so that they're easier to find and read without having to flick between prompt numbers. The fics can be found as the other works in this KWmonth (Keithtober x Whumptober) series :)
> 
> So far, these are the ones I've put together:  
> Fire/Nightmares/Abandoned/Loner - 'Fire & Nightmares' [Part 2]  
> Kral Zera/Hostage/Cryopods/Last Words/[TBC] - 'Knowledge or Death' [Part 3]
> 
> The continuation of the story started in Alien Planet (feat. Kolivan learning that 'mission before the individual' has its faults) will most likely be added as Part 4 - I'll put it up once the next chapter's written! :) In the meantime, thank you all sooo much for reading these prompts and for your comments!! <3

"We're going home."

For the initial few months out in space, going back to Earth hadn't been on Keith's list of things to look forward to. He'd been still recovering from the year of isolation he spent out in the desert, so the thought of going back there, back to that loneliness and hopelessness and depression had been too unbearable to think about, let alone look forward to.

Now the future doesn't look so bleak though, and if there is one thing he misses besides the family he's just recently been reunited with, it's Earth.

They've just got to get there first.

Krolia walks over to him and rests a hand on his shoulder. "Keith. Let's get Shiro back into the pod."

It takes a moment longer than it should for his brain to process her words.

"Right," he says. "Yeah, that's a good idea."

His tone is off. Keith hears it through the ringing in his ears and the others hear it clear as day. Lance watches him warily.

"You good?" he asks.

Keith nods. "I'm fine."

Lance raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

He's not fine, not really. He's been through hell: fighting Shiro's clone and trying to stay alive; crashing into falling platforms, the Black Lion and then the pilot's seat; pushing himself and Black to the limits to get back to the team on time; and then fighting Lotor and having to stay alert while they all repaired the damage the aftermath of that fight did. Put simply, Keith needs to rest - urgently. His body's not going to be able to hold out much longer.

_I just need to get Shiro back to the pod in Black, then talk to the team to decide what we're going to do from here and then...._

It's not much more to do, yet as he crouches down to help Krolia lift Shiro, Keith feels the blood drain from his face.

He sucks in a breath. _I'm fine. Come on, just a little bit longer._

It's when he stands up that he realises he's not going to make it that 'little bit longer'.

Krolia sees it. Her eyes widen a fraction but then her entire face blurs and she's telling him to set Shiro back down quick -

Strong arms around his shoulders. A whirl if blue and white catches Shiro before Keith loses his grip on him. Someone shouts his name.

Lance is talking to him, asking him to relinquish his hold on Shiro. He does.

"It's alright, Keith. I've got you."

Allura. She lowers him to the ground and Keith realises his legs aren't holding him up anymore - he's not sure when that happened, but it obviously did. It's a good thing Allura was nearby, then.

The dizziness eases a little once he's lying in his back. Keith closes his eyes, exhales slowly. There's movement going on around him but everyone sounds a good distance away so he lets himself drift.

At some point, Krolia and Hunk remove his armour and his boots. He hears Hunk comment on something about not looking so good.

A tap on the collarbone. "Hey man, you with us?"

Keith groans in what was supposed to be words.

"That's good," Hunk says. "I'm going to sit you up now, okay? You need to drink some water. Well, it's space juice, but it's close enough. Think you can do that or do you feel like you need to puke first?"

The honest answer is the latter, but Keith hopes a bit more hydration will settle his stomach so he nods.

"Uh..which one?"

"Can you help me up?" he whispers.

Hunk slips a hand under his back and pulls him into a lean against himself. Keith's stomach roils.

"Woah, woah. Keith."

He swallows hard, mouth watering.

"Oh no."

There's nothing to it, just dry-wretching. Krolia murmurs something and gathers his hair in her hands, getting it out of his face. Hunk holds him steady.

A voice from further away. "Quiznak! Is he okay?"

"What does it look like, Coran?" Krolia retorts

There's a stunned silence and then Pidge and Lance start laughing. Hunk joins in. Keith's too busy to look at his mother's expression to see why, but even he can't help but grin.

Pidge snorts. "You two are definitely related."

Krolia ignores them. "You think you can hold down any water?" she asks.

"I can try," Keith says weakly.

He's shaking when she hands him a pouch, but Hunk helps sit upright long enough to drink half of it.

Romelle appears with a pillow in her arms. "I wasn't sure how long you were going to rest out here so I brought this."

Keith blinks. "Oh, I..."

"We'd probably be best to get him inside the Black Lion," Krolia says. "Thank you though, Romelle."

"We should...probably get moving, too." Keith tries not to be sick again at the thought of having to keep going. "Earth's a long way away..."

"Keith, you need to rest first. That's the first priority right now."

Hunk makes him lie back down as if to prove a point. Keith can't argue.

"I just don't want to slow us down," he murmurs. "I can push through this."

Krolia grunts. "Say what you like, but you and I both know you can't." She pauses, eyes flashing. "Is this because you think everyone expects you to be a good leader?"

Keith gulps. Krolia knows exactly where he's coming from. Two years of bonding time on a space whale would do that, wouldn't it?

"Leadership's not just about the ability to lead, Keith," she says. "It's also about the ability of the team team to support each other. The leader is simply the one who evaluates how best the team can support each other in a given situation." She nods at him. "And that includes supporting you."

It's a strange concept. No one has ever been there for him beside Shiro. Keith's always been expected to deal with things himself, like the news of what happened with the Kerberos mission.

The concept of people wanting to support him is even stranger. Bewildering, even.

Keith glances between his mother and Hunk, Pidge and Lance who have come to stand beside Romelle, and Coran who's hovering a couple of metres behind them. Allura must be taking care of Shiro.

A team, working together like family. It doesn't matter who's leader and who's not. There's no heirachy here - this isn't the Garrison, or the Blade of Marmora.

This is Voltron, and Voltron are found family.

 

 


	19. Space Whale: Kogane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith struggles accepting Krolia as family and Krolia soon learns why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks at number of kudos* :O !!! Wow, thank you all so much!!!!

"I'm sure you still have questions," Krolia murmurs.

Keith shrugs. He doesn't answer, just stares into the flames and concentrates on the burning of the air against skin.

"Keith?"

He narrows his eyes. It doesn't sit right, Krolia calling him by his name in a tone that implies she's familiar with it. She's his mother, sure, but Keith's unfamiliar with that very concept.

"Not now," he says curtly.

Krolia turns the skewer of meat she's roasting and doesn't press anymore.

There aren't any questions left to ask. Keith understands why she left. He gets why it was imperative she leave Earth - leave him, and his Dad - to stop any more scouts finding trace of the Blue Lion. He's seen enough from the visions to know a bit about the kind of person his mother is.

But that doesn't undo any of the hurt her absence caused him.

Keith doesn't have the heart to tell her he's been an orphan for the last twelve years. That his Dad's not coming home. Ever. That the human she fell in love with and conceived him with is no longer alive.

He doesn't say anything but she finds out that same night anyway.

 

Keith comes awake in the middle of the night. The fire's still burning. At his back, the cosmic wolf stirs.

Something woke him.

He knows by the nausea settling in his belly that it was another vision. All of them have been unsettling, especially the one he saw about Shiro with that strange look in his eyes... but this was a different kind of vision: it was a memory.

A memory, and one that Keith tries to avoid thinking about.

He didn't see the vision but he knows the memory this kind of nausea is associated with. The only time he's felt exactly like this was twelve years ago, standing in front of his father's grave for the first time. The fact that it had been autumn hadn't helped, what with the nostalgic smell of decaying leaves lying in heaps all around the cemetery.

No one had ever understood why he hated autumn so much, but that was because they couldn't taste grief in the air like he could. One time one of the foster kids at the group home decided it would be a good idea to bury Keith in a pile of fallen oak leaves. They'd thought his thrashing had been him enjoying playing around in the leaves and so they had gathered even more and dumped them over him.

Keith swallows hard at the memory. At that age, he hadn't understood what a panic attack was and so he'd legitimately thought he was going suffocate to death - even though there was technically still oxygen getting into his lungs. The kid who'd thrown the leaves over him quickly stopped laughing when he stopped moving. But then they'd just left him there while they ran to get help...

A shadow falls over him. The cosmic wolf pup shifts a little. Keith stays lying as he is, in his side with an arm bent beneath his head. The shadow hesitates a moment before crouching down beside him and laying a hand of his shoulder.

"Keith," Krolia whispers. "I'm sorry."

Her voice dips, thickening. A noise like a suppressed sob escapes her. Keith curls in on himself before he ends up doing the same.

They don't speak of what Keith knows Krolia saw in that vision. Neither of them get much sleep, and Krolia seems reluctant to be away from him for more than an approximate hour. Keith avoids eye contact, already knowing what emotions he'll see on her face if he looks and being too raw from being forced to relive those emotions to cope with it.

The wolf notices the change in their body language straight away. He doesn't teleport long distances when out hunting and gathering with Keith anymore and at mealtimes, though he still hovers near Krolia in the hope she'll share some of her food like her son does, he doesn't bother her so much for it.

A day and a half later, Keith can't keep down the fresh waves of grief any longer. The nausea doesn't leave him until he's thrown up what's left in his stomach of last night's and this morning's food, and even then not until he finally relents on letting Krolia come near enough to hug him.

It's painful. Kolivan's always telling him not to let his emotions get in the way and now Keith doesn't know how to release them. The only means he had to vent before was with the rush of adrenaline that came with missions or training. And so his sobs are loud and full of hiccups, and his hands are shaking so bad he has to hold them tight against his breastplate.

Krolia's faring a little better, but it's hard to tell since she keeps her head bowed and her face hidden in his hair.

They mourn together and the cosmic wolf almost looks relieved. Keith forgives and Krolia laments, and for the first time in many, many years the two of them regain the feel of family.

That night is the first time Keith ever calls his Mum.

 

 


	20. Sword/Blade: Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kolivan breaks protocol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had the idea for this fic in my head for a couple of weeks now - it was originally going to be for the Alien Planet prompt, but ended up being for this one instead :) 
> 
> (If you want to read Alien Planet/Sword, Blade/... as a single fic, I'm posting it as Part 4 of the K-W month (Keithtober x Whumptober) series - 'Breaking Protocol'.)

At the hint of anything going wrong, a hard out is Kolivan's first instinct. It's what's kept the Blade of Marmora under the Empire's radar for countless decapheobs. Every Blade who ignored that protocol never came back from the mission.

Except Keith.

He's done it more than once, which is the concerning part. He'd nearly joined Regris in his fate the second-to-last time he'd ignored the order to run, and the most recent time... Kolivan would either be dead or captured if he hadn't.

Voltron hadn't been too pleased to have their Black Paladin return to them with burns covering his back and requiring a cryopod. They most certainly would not be happy to have him not return at all, which brings Kolivan to his current dilemma.

He's going to have to break protocol.

He'd like to convince himself that it is simply a necessity. Voltron will be compromised unless he does so and thus he must. It is, however, also more than that - he's grown to care about Krolia's son and, after what Keith did for him on the last mission, Kolivan isn't willing to leave him behind.

Of course, when the trap activates, Kolivan gaps it. The planet's inhabitants will catch him too if he lingers. He hears Keith's shouts abruptly cut out and all sounds of struggling stop, but he keeps running.

The hiding spot he chooses is one concealing a net trap similar to the once Keith was just caught in. Kolivan unsheathes his blade and cuts the drawstring trigger, rendering the trap useless, and waits.

Nobody comes by. Kolivan stays where he is though, as he is, until he is sure Keith's captors are gone from the area and won't see him following.

The time amounts to roughly half a varga before he starts trailing them. Forty dobashes later he sees them down below in a fully, but they're coming back the way they just went and they're coming back without Keith.

Kolivan doesn't move.

"...alright to leave it there?" one of the captors asks in accented Common language.

The shortest of the group of four doesn't seem fazed. "There is nothing of concern. We have it's weapon and it's comrade already ditched, so it won't escape, and we bound it's mouth so it won't bother the animals... what is your worry?"

"What of when it wakes up?"

"As I said, it's not going anywhere. Taking it with us would have only slowed us down and given opportunity for our catch to have been stolen from us by the neighbours. We would get no reward then."

Once they are out of hearing range, Kolivan moves. From what it sounds like, they're keeping Keith in a stable. It also sounds like his mask has been damaged, something that makes Kolivan conscious of time ticking. The air on this planet is breathable, but it's also dangerous. Without his mask filtering out those dangerous components, Keith's likely to fall ill fairly quickly.

Time is of the essence. But first, Keith's blade.

Kolivan swoops down into the gully and attacks the party from behind. They don't see or hear him coming, so Kolivan dispatches all four of them in a few tics. He finds Keith's blade reverted back to knife form in the leader's satchel, takes it, and then sprints off in the direction from which they came.

One of the atmospheric components of this planet is kalvaki. While it is harmless to breathe for most species, it compromises the Galra immune system within a varga or two of exposure, causing nausea and rapidly progressing fever.

Kolivan's unsure of whether Keith's human biology would act as a defense or simply make those symptoms worse. Whichever it is, the kalvaki in the air will eventually start affecting him.

If it hasn't already.

The guess as to Keith's location proves to be correct. 'Animals' leads Kolivan to a stable some five dobashes away. It's empty aside from the three domesticated steeds wandering the closed in yard and Keith, slumped against a hitching post. Kolivan double checks he's not about to compromise his own safety before going in.

Keith's conscious when he gets to him, but true to his suspicions, his mask is down. His wrists are tied above his head to a notch in this hitching post and a thick length of plant material - on closer look, an endemic vine - has been looped around the lower half of Keith's face, forcing his mouth open wide and effectively gagging him.

The vine is too fibrous and wound too tightly around Keith's head to remove all at once without slicing skin, so Kolivan nicks the outermost layer instead and unwraps the gag carefully from there.

Keith groans in pain as the pressure lifts. The vine leaves a band of bright red on his face and an apparent stiffness in his jaw, but Kolivan doesn't notice any other ailments besides the bruise on his temple.

That doesn't account for the damage that could be happening within.

"You bro'e pro'ocol," Keith whispers, a faint smile playing at his lips.

Kolivan cuts through the length of vine binding Keith's wrists to the hitching post. "I am aware of my actions."

Keith grunts. It turns into a cough when Kolivan helps him lower his arms, though, causing Kolivan to come back to his previous concerns for Keith's health.

"Do your lungs hurt?"

Keith frowns at his hands, now unbound and lying limp in his lap. "I don't..." The tone of his voice pitches and he breaks out coughing. "My throat is sore," he croaks when the fit is over. "And I'm not feeling that great."

"Can you walk?" Kolivan asks.

The colour drains from Keith's face immediately. He sucks in a breath and swallows hard. The answer is clearly no.

Kolivan shuffles around so that his back is to Keith. "Get on."

"Nhh?"

"That's an order. We have delayed long enough and you're ill. We must leave. Now."

It's with trembling arms that Keith pulls himself onto his back. Kolivan figures his hands are still yet to regain feeling, judging by the awkward way Keith's fingers are curled, so he grasps Keith by the forearms and pulls him up the rest of the way.

Kolivan doesn't wait around. The location of the barn may be remote, but they're in unfamiliar territory and so are at a disadvantage if anyone finds them here - not to mention the critical fact that only Kolivan is fit for fighting. Keith doesn't protest when he runs, but he can tell the movement is only making him more nauseous, so Kolivan picks up the pace.

They are fortunate. No one apprehends them and the traps Kolivan does come across are conspicuous enough to avoid completely. They get back to the ship, unharmed, within half a varga.

Keith's breathing has become considerably shallower by the time they get there. As soon as the ship's access point registers Blade presence and lets them, Kolivan is quick to get him in and settled in the passenger chair. Keith's eyes are open but he's losing the ability to focus. He'll be losing consciousness soon.

All the symptoms line up: he's in the early stages of kalvaki poisoning. Galra can die from untreated kalvaki poisoning. Kolivan knows because it happened to his father.

He's not going to let it happen to Keith.

As Kolivan launches the ship and pilots them off the planet, he finally chooses to acknowledge his other reason for going back for Keith. While he's a Paladin of Voltron and becoming a highly skilled Blade, Keith is the closest thing Kolivan's ever had to a son.

Family means no one gets left behind, the Paladin named Lance once said during a coalition meeting.

Kolivan's beginning to understand what that means.

 

 


	21. Pilot: Crash-landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After piloting the team (and crash-landing) to Earth in the Galran ship, Keith has to be pulled from the wreckage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously can't believe so many people like these prompts - thank you all so much!!!!!!! :O
> 
> Btw, I'm on Tumblr under the same name if you want to follow me for updates, the occasional art post, fic recs etc. :)

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

\--

One by one, the team crawls out of the back of the ship. Romelle rubs her arm, Lance his head. Hunk stumbles away from the group to puke. Shiro helps Allura to her feet as Pidge and Kosmo slip out of the cargo hold before them. Coran follows.

No one emerges without a bruise somewhere on their body, but the fact that they all get out alive is a testament to Keith's skilled piloting. Even with two arms, Shiro doesn't think he could pull off a descent like that.

"Great flying there, Kei..." Shiro trails off.

There's no sight or sound of Keith. . Shiro's heart plummets faster than the ship did. He turns around -

The cockpit is crushed.

Pidge screeches when she sees the damage. "Keith!"

They've just set foot on their home planet for the first time in years, but there's nothing to be had but multi-language swearing, mildly controlled panic and a silence from the cockpit that there shouldn't be.

Kosmo flashes and reappears at the front of the ship. He whines as he searches for a way in and finds none.

Shiro and Pidge are the first to move after Kosmo, circling around to the front of the ship. Shiro can't breathe.

The panels are bent inwards or otherwise buried in the earth, the nose of the ship a mess of twisted metal. The vacuum proof windshield is cracked and it's shape distorted, and the underneath of the ship appears to be less than half a metre from meeting the roof.

Inside all of that is Keith.

Pidge activates her Bayard and gets her calculative face on. "Hunk, get over here!"

Pidge and Hunk talk engineering and formula. If the descent had made Hunk queasy, there's no telling what he must be feeling now. Unexpectedly though, it's Shiro who loses his lunch instead.

Without his arm, he can't do anything. The helplessness shakes him to the core. That arm may have nearly killed Keith but the lack of it might also. It's not like they can just pry the ship open with their bare hands -

"Keith!' Lance yells. "Whatever you do, don't move!"

The red Bayard becomes an Altean broadsword. He carefully wedges the blade in a narrow gap between the windshield and a screwed up panel, then shifts to let Hunk step in beside him. Pidge readies her Bayard and nods.

The metal groans. Hunk and Lance lean their weight into the handle of the broadsword. As soon as the leverage starts working the metal and the windshield apart, Pidge powers up her Bayard and begins cutting one of the panels from the wreckage.

Kosmo barks. Everyone freezes.

A strip of teal can be seen through the small gap. It takes a moment before Shiro registers what it is.

Paladin armour. Keith.

Allura joins in the effort, lifting Pidge up on her shoulders to get to the top of the panel. Coran and Romelle urge Shiro to stand back a little, to give them a bit more room, but Shiro finds he can't. He can't move. He won't.

There's still no response from Keith. Lance keeps calling his name, shouting reassurances that they're working as fast as they can to get him out of there. Kosmo won't stop barking.

A dented panel gives. Pidge and Allura peer inside the gap to make sure of where Keith's at before ripping the panel free.

Light floods into the cockpit. Keith slumps over the damaged console, pinned there by a great slab of metal presumably from the caved in roof. Unlike the state of the ship, though, Keith's armour remains in tact.

Coran pats Shiro on the shoulder.

Pidge braces her hands on either side of the window. "Keith! Hey, can you hear me?"

No movement, but a weak groan.

"Keith? Are you with us?"

"..n't 'ea'e..."

"Keith?"

Kosmo whines.

"I think he said he can't breathe, Pidge," Lance says. His hands shake as deactivates his Bayard. "He's not...?"

Shiro pushes past Coran and Romelle to get a closer look. His hearts beating horrendously fast, but when he finds he can't see anything impaling Keith's body, and that it's just because his stomach is pressed so hard against the console, he relaxes slightly.

"We need to remove what's pinning him down," Shiro says as calmly as he can manage. "He can't breathe because his diaphragm can't expand properly."

Keith whimpers.

"You're going to be fine, Keith. Just hang in there another minute or so."

Pidge frowns. "You realise that means we have to remove the entire roof."

Hunk's eyes widen. "But won't that - "

"Yes, it will."

The roof is too heavy to lift without cutting it into smaller pieces first, but doing so would mean risking the other pieces collapsing in on Keith, making it harder again to get him out and only increasing the likelihood of injuring him.

"Then we drag him out," Lance says.

Pidge opens her mouth to argue but Lance cuts her off.

"You and Hunk keep the roof up while Shiro, Allura and I manouvre Keith out of there." He pauses, then leans over the window. "You don't have a leg stuck or anything, do you?"

Keith manages a whispered, "No."

"Alright, then that's the plan. Let's hurry up. Pretty sure Keith doesn't want to spend the next however long waiting for us to discuss science. Romelle, Coran - be ready to help Hunk and Pidge if they need it."

A smile creeps across Shiro's face. Lance, truly stepping into the role of Keith's right hand man. He'll make a great leader someday.

It's slow going and nerve-wracking, but after fifteen minutes of careful manouvring, they pull Keith free of the wreckage. He's shaking and slightly on the hysterical side of relief to be out in the open and able to move again, but there's no serious harm done. After spending a few minutes collapsed on the ground regaining his breath, Keith's back up on his feet again.

Looking over at the wreckage, Shiro can see once again the kind of pilot Keith is. He'd made sure that the ship took the impact for them, the result of which has them all still standing, bruised and a little shaken, but uninjured. But had the ship been accelerating even a couple of metres per second squared faster, it would've been Keith taking the damage for the rest of them as well.

Shiro's too relieved to put into words how glad he is that it didn't come to that.

 

 


	22. Krolia: "I left you once..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Prompt 18: Leadership, Krolia realises one of the reasons why Keith has difficulty trusting others to support him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day late, but here we are!

Krolia frowns. "No wonder you didn't want to come out when we were packing things into the Lions."

She rubs the antiinflammatory cream over a particularly nasty bruise and Keith winces. The dim lighting of the Black Lion's interior and the contrast of Keith's pale skin and the black of his hair only serve to make it look worse than it is.

The bruise spans across the back of Keith's neck in a dark line. It's discoloured in the centre, at the base of the neck, an injury that could've been prevented had Keith been wearing a helmet at the time the hurt happened - which, obviously, he hadn't been. She comments as much.

"It got knocked off during the fight," Keith murmurs. "Don't even remember getting hit there, though. Must've happened when Black caught us."

Krolia catches the stuff tone to his words and leans forward to raise an eyebrow at him.

"'Knocked off'? It's Paladin armour, Keith," she says. "It's not meant to come off that easily."

Keith keeps his gaze fixed in front of him.

"It was the clone, am I right?"

He narrows his eyes. Krolia pokes the bruise on the underside of his jaw and he yelps.

"You're lucky you weren't knocked out. He would've finished you off."

Keith scowls. "What's your point?"

"My point is that you're hurt and you need to take the necessary time to recover. You'll only wear yourself out if you don't."

"Mum, I'm fi-"

"You are not fine."

"I can handle it."

"Mentally yes, but your body can't. Remind me again why you collapsed earlier?"

She moves onto a mottled bruise in his lower back. Keith flinches at the touch, still scowling.

Krolia hums. "I know you hate being told to rest. I know you're frustrated and you feel like you're letting the team down, but you're not, okay? Leader or not, you're not letting the team down."

"I did last time."

Krolia pauses in rubbing in the ointment. "How so?"

Keith's shoulders slump forward.

"Keith?"

"Because I wasn't good enough," he grits out.

The bitter edge to his words, the frustration in his tone, the tension in his shoulders and that glare he uses when he's in the defensive...

Keith's afraid, Krolia realises.

"The Black Lion doesn't think so," she says. "Shiro doesn't think so. I don't, and I really don't think the others do either."

"You weren't there. You didn't see - "

"Keith."

Krolia screws the lid back on the ointment container. She wipes her hand on a cloth and then pats him on the shoulder. Keith turns his head to look at her.

"You're exhausted," Krolia murmurs. "Now isn't the time to go exhausting yourself further by overthinking these things. Lie down and rest. Let the team support you."

There are years worth of hurt in Keith's eyes - betrayal, even - that Krolia only understands a part of. It hurts to see him like this, every one of his walls down due to the sheer exhaustion he's dealing with, vulnerable...and at the root of it, scared.

Scared that they'll think he's not good enough to lead.

Scared that they'll replace him.

Or reject him.

Or leave.

Krolia's not eligible to say that she's not part of the reason why.

Eventually Keith relents, his earlier burning out getting the better of him. He heaves a sigh, head bowed.

"Fine," he says, grabbing a clean shirt and pulling it on. "Just wake me if something comes up. Please?"

Krolia nods. She gets up from her seat on the bed to let Keith crawl under the covers. He does so with a resigned sigh.  
The colour drains from his face with the movement, but it starts returning a couple of dobashes after lying down.

Krolia pulls the blankets further up over his shoulders and then leaves the room to let him sleep.

  
Keith's mood is better when he wakes, but Krolia still keeps a close eye on him. The bruises are healing well and the stiffness seems to be leaving his muscles as the day progresses, but he's still dealing with a fatigue he refuses to acknowledge.

It's not just Krolia who's concerned.

"You should get some rest, Keith," Pidge says, frowning. "You look tired."

Hunk nods. "Yeah, man. We're not going anywhere anytime soon."

"I'm fine," Keith murmurs, staring at Shiro's pod.

Allura and Lance exchange a worried look.

"Uh, Keith?" Lance says. "No offense, but you really don't look so good. Better than yesterday, yes, but..."

But since they're in the middle of discussing their options of where to from here, Keith objects.

Krolia knows where this is coming from. They spent enough time together on the space whale and emmersed in the visions they saw that she's come to be able to read her son's reactions.

This, like yesterday, is coming from a place of fear.

In Keith's eyes, they're telling him he's of not much use right now, tired as he is. If they don't mind if he's not here for the meeting, then it must mean he's not necessary. And if he's not necessary, then he'll be shoved aside.

Discarded. Rejected.

There's trauma associated with that. It's not something Keith can simply rule out as anxiety and move in with his life, and so, even after two years and a few pheobs of being apart from the Paladins, Keith still fears being rejected by them.

So Krolia doesn't say anything, despite the others' insisting. Keith needs to feel a part of this team again. He needs to be able to believe he's a part of it, and if being here for this discussion is one of the things it'll take to convince him, then she reasons they ought to let him be.

But it soon becomes clear that he needs the rest. Keith's beginning to sway on his feet, eyes half shut.

This time Krolia speaks up. Keith doesn’t argue.

Leaving an unconscious Shiro and a concerned team behind in the Black Lion's hold, she walks Keith back to the cabin room.

Once through the door, Keith promptly collapses. He's passed out before his knees hit the floor.

Krolia catches him and sinks down to the ground with him. Not wanting to let him go, she settles down with her legs crossed and manoeuvres her son to lie against her.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, listening to his breathing even out.

She kisses him on the forehead, closes her eyes, breathes in deep.

Keith has difficulty trusting the others to hold him up and she can’t help but feel at fault for it. Keith's already forgiven her, she knows, it's just...

Perhaps she's afraid of rejection too.


	23. Found Family: Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the prompt Red Lion, Shiro has everyone write messages for Keith after the recent part Galra revelation.

Pidge stares at the green notepaper. She stares at it, intensely, waiting for the words she needs to come to mind but they never do.

She groans. "Argh, I'm no good at this."

On the other side of the dining table, Lance has his tongue stuck out as he starts writing his second line. Hunk's already finished his and is looking like he's wanting to add more. Shiro's on his third bit of paper already, although there's one screwed up in a ball beside him, so really it's only the second.

Coran left a quick note which is now sitting beside Shiro. Unsurprisingly, there's none from Allura, and neither Kolivan nor his buddy Antok would've known how to join in even if they'd asked them.

There's no red paper.

Lance heaves a sigh, tapping his pen against the table. "This is harder than I thought it would be."

Hunk hums.

Pidge's paper is still blank. "Guys, I literally have no idea what to say. 'You're Galra, so what, Keith? It's all goods.'"

"I just put that finding out he's part Galra doesn't mean we're going to kick him off the team it anything," Hunk says.

Lance nods. "I said he's still Keith. It's not like anything's changed. I mean, he's been part Galra all the time we've known him and well, y'know, his entire life."

Pidge frowns. The green notepaper is still blank and so is her mind.

Shiro leans back in his seat. He looks absolutely exhausted, shadows under his eyes and a strain to his expression that wasn't there before he and Keith left for the Blade of Marmora.

"He just needs to know that we're not about to reject him," Shiro says. "It's be better if he heard it direct from us, but this is still a good alternative."

Pidge sighs. She thinks of Keith, presumably still asleep in Red where Shiro saw him last. She thinks of the unfocused look in his eyes, the bruises beginning to reveal themselves on his face as they left the hangar. The way they hadn't seen him since.

It was a surprise to them all, to hear from Shiro and Kolivan about Keith's biology. Without a doubt, it must've been a shock for Keith to find out and a rather overwhelming idea to wrap his head around. But it's not like they hate him...

And yet, considering Allura's reaction...

Yes, Keith does need to know that they don't think any less of him, and they're the ones who need to tell him.

Pidge turns on the pen and starts writing.

 

It's seventeen hours of sleep later that Keith wakes. He's stiff all over, and sore, but having sleep so long he does feel a bit better. Marginally.

Red hums, still wrapping up his thoughts in the warmth of her consciousness.

He yawns, pushes himself up and reaches for one of the water pouches Shiro brought down -

Notepaper. Green and blue and yellow and grey and orange. Keith's heart beats faster.

Are these... farewell letters?

But then his eyes catch the words on the green paper and he stills.

You're Galra, so what? It's all goods!

And the blue.

Being part Galra doesn't change who you are - it's just a part of who you are: Keith Kogane, the best pilot the universe has ever seen!

And the yellow.

Keith, we miss you up here with us, buddy. You're part of the family! Finding out that your part Galra doesn't change that!

By the time he gets to Shiro and Coran's notes, his vision's too blurry to make out the words.

Red purrs.

_Keith. Human. Galra. Paladin. Family._


	24. Training: Everyone Needs a Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An accident happens during a sparring session and the wolf teaches Krolia how to be a Mum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *goes on a field trip and forgets to buy mobile data before heading to a place without WiFi....
> 
> Oops.

Dread pools in Krolia's stomach.    
  
He's not moving.    
  
She bends over him to get a better look at his face. His eyes are closed, mouth slack, and there's a slightly inflamed mark on the side of his head where Krolia's elbow guard connected with his temple.   
  
"Keith?"   
  
The young wolf, who'd been sitting in front of the cave watching them spar, materialises beside them. It looks down at Keith, back up at Krolia and then leans down to nudge Keith's head with it's nose. When that doesn't wake him, it licks his face all over.   
  
Keith splutters. Krolia breathes a sigh of relief.   
  
Pushing the wolf away, Keith rolls onto his back. He opens his eyes but just as quickly screws them shut. With a groan, he rolls back onto his side and cradles his head in his hands.   
  
Krolia kneels down beside him and tentatively lays a hand on his shoulder.   
  
"Sorry," she says.   
  
Keith's only response is a pained grunt.   
  
The wolf stares at Keith for a while before tilting it's head. It's gaze flicks up to Krolia, questioning.   
  
In practice, Krolia knows how to deal with a concussion. What she doesn't know, however, is how to care for her son when he has one.    
  
They're already walking a tight rope re-establishing their mostly non-existent mother-son relationship. And now, during their first sparring session, Keith took a blow that knocked him out.   
  
She should've been more careful. Humans are more fragile than Galra. Keith may be an excellent fighter, but that doesn't make him any less prone to injury. And since they don't know how long they will be on this mission for...   
  
"Krolia, stop worrying. I'm fine."   
  
She blinks, startled. Keith's not even looking at her; he's still facing the other way, eyes squeezed shut in a grimace.   
  
"How did you...?"   
  
"The wolf told me."   
  
Krolia frowns. "The wolf?"   
  
She looks between the two of them, puzzled. But Keith, sensing her inability to understand their mysterious communication, just waves a hand in the air.   
  
Krolia wants to help him up, but from what she's seen from his body language over the last week, Keith's somewhat touch-adverse. He's also insistent that he can handle things on his own, that he doesn't need help - that he's fine.    
  
It's like he has trouble trusting people to be there to support him when he needs it -    
  
_ Oh _ . And Krolia wonders why.   
  
Keith gets up slowly, although he doesn't get further than bracing himself on his hands and knees before he's screwing his eyes shut again. He mutters something that sounds like a curse word.   
  
A nudge against her arm. Krolia glances down to see the wolf pushing her arm forwards, towards Keith.    
  
She frowns.  _ What...? _   
  
Dropping her arm, the wolf gently takes her hand in its jaws and guides it again in Keith's direction.   
  
_ You're right, I should help him. _   
  
Krolia has no idea what she's doing. She's forgotten how to comfort and she's forgotten how humans go about helping each other.    
  
But then she remembers what her husband did for her when he pried open the wreckage of her ship and she makes the connection between that action and the one the wolf is encouraging her to do.   
  
_ Give him a hand. _   
  
"Keith."   
  
He opens his eyes and glances at the hand she has extended beside him. He stares at it for several tics, as though trying to work out what it means, then he looks up at Krolia's expression.   
  
Krolia doesn't know what it is he reads there. Their eyes are only locked for three or four tics, but she can feel him weighing up the choice of accepting help over struggling on his own to get to his feet.   
  
Averting his gaze, Keith accepts her hand.   
  
Krolia pulls him up, steadying him with an arm around his back. Keith's eyes don't stray from a spot on the ground in front of his feet, but his shoulders tense at the touch. He looks as though he'd have shrugged off her arm had it not been for his dizziness.   
  
"Let's go sit down," Krolia says. "I'll see if we can do anything for your head."   
  
Keith makes the mistake of nodding. He winces and stumbles sideways, into Krolia and into what is essentially a hug.    
  
Instinctively, Krolia goes to pull out of it, but then she notices the blur of teleporting cosmic wolf flashing back to the cave and reconsiders. Before Keith can be the one to withdraw, Krolia pulls his arm over her shoulders and starts the slow walk after the wolf.   
  
Keith exhales slowly. "Thanks."

Unable to find the appropriate phrase to reply with, Krolia simply hums.   
  
"I'm sorry for knocking you out," she says instead.   
  
Keith frowns. "No, it's my fault - I should've seen it coming."   
  
Krolia doesn't understand how, though. He'd just feinted to the side and dropped into a lunge when Krolia's reflexes took over and she'd elbowed him in the head. There's no way he could've anticipated that move unless he knew her well.   
  
...unless he knew her - his own mother - well.

She helps Keith over to his usual sleeping spot, on the opposite side of the cave to hers, and gently eases him down. Keith sinks down on his side, propped up by an elbow, then gives in and lies down completely.   
  
He brings a hand to the swelling on his temple. "This space whale isn't cold enough for ice at all, is it?"   
  
"Maybe in the upper reaches," Krolia says,  "but I'm not certain there'd be much atmosphere up there."   
  
"Don't worry about it, then. I'll be fine without it."   
  
Krolia raises an eyebrow. Obviously he's not fine, but what is she meant to say and do in these situations? Since they've only been in the whale just over a movement, they haven't had much a chance to find which plants have medicinal properties to them, and so they have nothing in their small storage that could ease Keith's pain.   
  
Perhaps if she'd had experience with these kinds of situations, she'd be able to help him in some other way, but the thing is...she doesn't even know how to be a mother.   
  
Krolia guesses it's something she's going to have to learn, and now would be a good time to start.    
  
  
  



	25. "I guess I have some walls up."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Training, Keith and Krolia are caught in a quantum abyss vision - of Keith's vlog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's keen for a space whale fic?

_"I don't know why I'm that way. Maybe I'm naturally untrusting because my Mum left me and so, instead of accepting people into my life, I push them away before they reject me?"_

_"I guess I have some walls up..."_

There’s nothing but silence in the cave. Keith holds his breath.

Krolia’s staring at the wall, eyes wide. She’s rock-still. The wolf trots over to where she’s kneeling beside Keith, but it’s like she doesn’t even notice its there.

Then she turns her gaze down to Keith.

The pain in his head flares. His throat constricts. He’s far too vulnerable, lying here. Adrenaline’s already speeding through his veins and he feels the blood drain from his face, and all of a sudden he just _can’t -_

Krolia plants a hand on his chest.

A warning. He just took a bad hit to the head; he’s in no condition to be moving around. Less than a minute ago he had to get Krolia to help him back to the cave because he couldn’t walk in a straight line, let alone pick himself up off the ground.

_But that vision…_

Their eyes never leave each other. Both of them are wary, assessing. Afraid.

Keith’s heart beats wildly, waiting – waiting for Krolia’s anger to burn a hole through his gut, her bitter disappointment that her son would blame her for his problems with social interaction. He’s never been good at reading expressions and it scares him that can’t decipher where the intensity of Krolia’s stare is coming from.

But in the end it's Krolia who needs out first. She swallows hard, nostrils flaring, then withdraws her hand, stands and walks out of the cave, ducking out of sight just by the entrance.

The wolf stares after her, worried. Keith can gauge by the wolf's reactions that Krolia's not mad at him, nor is she disappointed in him for saying the things he said during his vlog.

She's just blaming herself.

Keith lets that sink in.

He props himself up on his elbows, wincing. “Krolia?”

The shadow outside the cave wavers. It slips a little further to the side. Keith’s brow furrows. He exchanges a glance with the wolf.

Clearing his throat and gathering his courage, Keith calls, “Mum?”

A noise that sounds suspiciously close to a sob.

_Screw this concussion._

Bracing his hands on the cave wall, Keith hauls himself to his feet and staggers over to the entrance. Krolia apparently doesn’t hear him coming, flinching when his shadow falls across the ground beside hers. Keith’s head is spinning and it’s making him nauseous, but seeing that broken expression on Krolia’s face…

He doesn’t have the words. He hasn’t had any experience in these kinds of situations so he has no idea what he’s doing, but something in Keith’s heart decides for him what to do.

Throwing all second thoughts to the wind, he wraps his arms around his mother.

Krolia presses her hand over her mouth a little more. Keith holds her a little tighter.

It’s strange, in a weird and a not-weird way, how familiar she is. He once knew her, Keith realises, it was just that his mind was too undeveloped to remember. It’s strange how the width of their shoulders match, but at the same time it’s not. It’s uncanny how much she looks like him – or rather, how much he looks like her…

It’s strange to have a mother.

Keith’s still not sure how he’s supposed to feel about it – how he _wants_ to feel about it. If there’s one thing he’s certain about though, it’s that Krolia’s most likely feeling the same way. He’s willing to give it a shot, re-establishing a mother-son relationship that they never really had. Keith just has absolutely no idea how to go about it. At all. Maybe he –

Krolia pulls her arms free of the hug. Keith tenses, about to hastily pull away from her when she returns the embrace and draws him close.

It’s awkward. Even without armour, it would’ve been. The pain in Keith’s head is only getting worse, but he’s scared that if he lets go now he’s not going to get another chance. He barely knows her, but there’s a sickening twist in his gut at the thought of Krolia leaving him.

And the truth, as he’s starting to realise, is that he doesn’t want that.

 _I’m letting my guard down,_ Keith thinks. _I’m accepting her._

The other thoughts are still there, though.

_What if she decides you’re not worth it?_

_What if something happens to her on this mission?_

_Remember what happened with Shiro? And Voltron? And your mother –_

His mother is here. She left him so that they could meet again. She left because she loved him so much that she took it upon herself to protect him as best she could from the other side of the universe.  

Krolia’s arms around him are enough to say that ‘loved’ was never past tense. It’s always been present.

 

 


	26. Shiro: Found Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back on Earth in Season 7, Voltron arrives at the Garrison and Keith becomes a target.

Keith busies himself petting Kosmo while Shiro and Iverson talk. He wishes Krolia could’ve come back to Earth with them, but he knows how important it is for her and Kolivan to gather the remaining Blades and he knows this time that his mother will come back to him.

 _At least you got to come back with me,_ Keith thinks at Kosmo.

The wolf whips his head around, snarling –

Something punches Keith in the neck.

Kosmo doesn’t waste time. A flash and he’s teleported back inside the vehicle they just arrived in. Keith rolls out of his crouch, hunkering down behind the seats right at the back, away from the windows.

Keith’s heartbeat pounds inside his head. His neck _hurts_. He has a suspicion why, but he raises a shaking hand to where it stings to check.

_Quiznak._

His fingers meet a dart the size of a pen. Keith inhales sharply and yanks it out with a grimace. There’s too much adrenaline – and something else – rushing through his veins to try to remain calm. His vision’s already growing fuzzy. His mouth’s starting to feel dry.

He calls out the only word that’s always at the tip of his tongue.

“Shiro!”

Keith fights the drug. The dim lighting of inside of the vehicle doesn’t help. Outside, Iverson’s barking orders and familiar voices are enraged. He thinks he hears Lance’s bayard as his eyelids shut against his will.

Heavy footsteps make the vehicle floor vibrate. Keith panics, forcing his eyes open to see a great shadow reaching out for him _but his muscles are refusing to move and –_

“..eith, it’s just me. It’s ..ro. Keith. Keith!”

His eyes are shut again. He doesn’t know when that happened, but he knows it’s Shiro. There’s chaos outside, but that chaos is protecting him.

Shiro’s protecting him.

Kosmo’s…

“..ay ‘ith me. Kei…! ..-nak…’!”

…

 

“ – fast acti – “

“Who would – “

“…liser?”

…

“…he's Galra..”

..

 

“Keith?”

“-iro, stay wi’..’im?”

..

“’ow long?”

“’ould wear off in…hours”

A jumble of syllables.

 

 

Keith groans. Brain fog…so much brain fog. His head hurts like…a brick?

A familiar voice is talking to him. He knows whose it is, he just can’t seem to pinpoint it. The tone of the person’s voice is low and gentle, meaning that they’re not in present danger. But there’s an edge of anger to it, something that that voice doesn’t often carry.

Shiro. Shiro’s angry. But not at Keith.  

At someone else.

A hand grips his. Keith’s not sure if it’s Shiro’s or not, but Shiro’s voice is telling him that he’s safe and he’s going to be okay and something about upping security and..

That’s all Keith hears before he fades out again.

 

 

His mind’s a lot clearer when he wakes the next time. He tells his eyes to open and they actually do.

He’s lying on a medical bed somewhere in the Garrison (judging by the colour scheme on the walls). There’s a thin blanket laid out over him, coming up to the waist of his flight suit. An IV drip is connected to a needle slipped into the back of one hand.

Keith’s head lolls a little when he looks sideways. The headache…aches.

Shiro smiles at his out-of-it expression. “Hey, Keith.”

He groans. “Wh’h’ppen’?”

“What happened?”

“Hnnngh.”

“Some moron took a shot at you with a tranquiliser. Kosmo got to show off his teleporting and Lance got to show off his sharpshooting skills in front of his family. Uhh…what else?” Shiro tilts his head to the side, thinking. “Oh yep, and Allura and Pidge took care of said moron’s little getaway party waiting to swoop in.”

Keith’s not really following. He can tell Shiro’s rambling a little, though, and he only ever talks excitedly when he’s coming down from an adrenaline rush and overwhelmed with relief.

_The moron probably had him worried._

Shiro leans forward in the bedside chair with a half-hearted laugh. “It was you I was worried about, bud.”

Oh. He said that out loud.

Keith frowns. Shiro’s acting so out of character it’s concerning. It must’ve been quite a scary ordeal for the others if Shiro’s like this.

“That’s because you were out cold for most of it,” Shiro explains. “They had that tranquiliser loaded. They were prepared.”

“Prep’r’d?”

“Sam had to warn everyone that you might set off the Galra presence sensors. A handful of people – all who we apprehended just before – didn’t like the idea of having you on Garrison premises.”

“Oh…”

Shiro lets out a sigh. _He’s starting to calm down now,_ Keith thinks, and the words remain inside his head. He’s beginning to understand why Shiro’s been worried, though – clearly the drugs in that tranquiliser weren’t just for knocking him out.

They’d been planning on taking him and making him talk.

Whatever the specific reason and why, Keith’s just beyond grateful for everyone for getting him out of there. He says as much. Kosmo could’ve only have gotten him so far. It’s because the others didn’t hesitate to take action and take out the ‘morons’ who had planned to take Keith from their midst…

“There’s no way we would’ve let them take you,” Shiro murmurs. “I might only have one arm, but that’s not stopping me from stopping them from getting to you.”

Keith forces a smile to his lips. “As many times as it takes.”

Shiro nods. “You got it.”

The door to the medical room slides open, revealing a stressed, relieved and tired group of paladins. Coran and Romelle wait outside so as not to overcrowd the room.

“You,” Lance says. “You had us all _freaked out,_ man!”

Pidge dives forward to wrap her arms around Keith’s shoulders. She mutters something under her breath about a physics formula and the ‘morons’.

“It’s certainly good to see you awake, Keith,” Allura murmurs.

There’s a great amount of concern in her eyes, and Hunk doesn’t seem to be able to wipe the shock from his face.

Keith frowns. “It was bad, wasn’t?”

“You’ve been out for five and a half hours,” Shiro offers.

 _Five…?!_ Keith’s eyes widen a fraction.

Shiro grimaces. “They were out to get you.”

Pidge withdraws from hugging Keith so that he can see the fury in her eyes.

“But they’re crow-food now,” she says tightly. “No one messes with my family. No one.”

Other things are mentioned. Other things are elaborated on. But it’s the spear of Pidge’s words in his chest that Keith can’t shake off.

Family. She just called him her family and no one argued – even when her half her biological family are nearby on base.

He’d been a little lonely stepping out of the vehicle to meet no one. But now Keith realises that it’s because he arrived at the Garrison with not just someone, but a whole entire found family of someone’s – people who had his back when he couldn’t watch it himself.

Keith can’t help but smile warmly at that.

 

 


	27. (Two) Black Paladins: A Deeper Hurt Than Kalvaki Poisoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith's dying from kalvaki poisoning, but Kolivan notices a wound that even a cryopod cannot heal.
> 
> Third part to Alien Planet/Sword-Blade.

Fifteen dobashes from arriving at the Castle of Lions, Keith becomes completely unresponsive. His breathing gets shallower by the dobash, the heat emitting from his forehead more intense.

Kolivan tries to wake him to no avail.

The injections of kalvaki suppressant are keeping the worst of the symptoms at bay - namely delirium and seizures - but it's not doing anything to stop the fever.

Keith died twice while at medical. They were able to get him stabilised but it took some time, further delaying getting him to a cryopod. Kolivan used to think Krolia's boy was pale, even more so on learning that the Paladin with Krolia's blade was in fact her son.

But he's never seen Keith this shade of white before and it's disturbing.

Halfway through the injecting the fifth dose (one dose below risking sending Keith into shock), Kolivan has to take the ship off auto-pilot to land. Keith doesn't react in the slightest when Kolivan slips out the half-emptied syringe and leaves his side.

The podbay door opens and Kolivan flies the ship into the hangar, the airlock sealing behind him. He's surprised to see all of the Paladins and the Advisor waiting in a tight bunch at the end of the docking bay.

_ Waiting for Keith _ , he assumes.

But their body languages seem somewhat off. Crossed arms, hands folded neatly in front of them, frowns, distances between each of them. It's clear that they're disappointed in Keith for being late, but this is something else...

Kolivan frowns. This is not the Voltron he knew when he first came to the Castle. Something or someone has changed among them.

The ship landed, Kolivan leaves the pilot's seat. He unbuckles the safety belts on the stretcher and lifts Keith up off the floor in his arms.

He doesn't have time to analyse differences in the team's dynamics right now, but he's starting to understand why Keith has been spending more time away from them of late.

 

 

There's also the matter of Shiro being back in Black Paladin at armour.

He waits for the ship's passenger compartment to open and carries Keith down the ramp in his arms.

Expressions morph instantly. Anger becomes shock. Frustration becomes guilt. Kolivan keeps his own expression at default.

“W-what happened?” Shiro asks.

Kolivan doesn't stop walking. “Pod first.”

“I think you owe us an answer - “

“You will owe Keith an apology if he isn't in a cryopod in ten dobashes.”

The other Paladins don't wait for him to elaborate. 

  
  


Keith's suspended in a cryopod in in seven. His Blade suit’s been left on, with only the breastplate having been taken off. They didn't have time to change him.

The kalvaki poison has already set in.

The last instance Kolivan saw that sickly yellow tinge to a person's skin, it was in the few dobashes prior to his father dying. With Keith's pale complexion, though, he already looks like death.

Miraculously, he's still hanging on - fighting the fever and the poison in his lungs like it's just another mission, one that he refuses to let get the best of him.

Humans, Kolivan has heard, are like that.

Over the twelve vargas Keith is in the pod, not once does the cryopod monitor change status. Keith keeps fighting and the cryopod fights with him, healing, expelling, stabilising. On the eleventh varga, when Kolivan returns from a long plan-of-action meeting with the Voltron crew, Keith no longer looks like an apparition.

By the twelfth varga, all traces of kalvaki have been expelled from his body.

Keith survived.

But when the cryopod releases him, and he stumbles into the arms of someone wearing Black Paladin armour...

Keith's gaze hardens. His eyes flick to Kolivan standing behind Shiro and his shoulders tense.

He swallows hard.

“Keith,” Shiro says. “How're you feeling?”

Keith pulls away from Shiro. “I'm fine.”

He's not. He's swaying on his feet, his body exhausted from fighting off the kalvaki, not to mention the post-cryopod nausea he's likely feeling.

But Kolivan's no fool. He can see that's not the area in which Keith's hurting the most. Maybe if the boy were better at masking his emotions it would be harder to tell, but it's evident that finding out there's now two Black Paladins is what's hurting the most. Keith fears rejection - something the Trials showed - and rejection is essentially what he's about to face.

_ Family means no one gets left behind. _

Voltron isn't currently operating as a family. They're operating as a team, yes, but not the tight-knit, accepting one Kolivan met after Keith's Trials.

So when Keith offers - or rather, insists - to step down from being leader, to let Shiro have Black again, not one person asks him to stay.

We'll miss you, they say.

If this is what you feel is right, they say.

They're giving up on him is what it boils down to.

They're expecting Keith to support the team but Kolivan can't see any sign of them having supported him as a leader. If they're willing to let him go so easily, knowing the high risk of Blade missions may cost Keith his life at any given notice like it almost did this day…

Kolivan doesn't question Keith's decision to leave. He understands it; if he were in Keith's position, he'd feel the same way.

And so Kolivan doesn't reprimand him for simmering in anger, because he knows the wound it came from is deep. Someday soon Keith will meet the mother who left him -  maybe then that wound can finally start healing.

  
  



	28. "I'm fine.": The Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a missing scene from "The Ruins", Kolivan is rescued and Keith recovers from fighting Macidus. Keith reflects on how Kolivan's been a father figure to him throughout his time as a Blade.
> 
> Takes place after 27.(Two) Black Paladins and after 1.Naxzela

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Guest for the prompt/idea of writing something on this episode! :) 
> 
> And thank you to you all for your awesome feedback re the Kolivan & Keith prompt fics!! <3 <3 You can find them all as Part 4 in the KWmonth (Keithtober x Whumptober) series: 'Breaking Protocol'.
> 
> I recommend re-reading Prompt 1. Naxzela as that bridges the story gap between 27. (Two) Black Paladins and this prompt!

Macidus explodes into nothingness.

Keith’s knees almost buckle. He braces his forearms on his knees before the do and exhales sharply. All he can hear in his heartbeat in his ears as he staggers sideways.

“Good job, Keith,” Lance says.

He’s high on adrenaline, bruised, scanning  _every detail_ of the tunnel for any other sign of the druid.

There’s none.

Hunk groans. “Yeah, I thought this was going to end with my face melted off like in that simulator.”

Keith struggles to get his breathing back under control.  _Kolivan. I need to help Kolivan._

It turns out moving is a bad idea. His muscles are still seizing up a little with the remnant shock of Macidus’ druid magic. It’s enough to leave him feeling weak and enough to send him tripping over his own feet.

“Woah, Keith!” Lance shouts.

Keith pushes himself up onto his elbows and gets no further. He drops his head, arms giving out.

“You okay?”

Hunk’s kneeling beside him, ready to give him a hand up. Keith takes a deep breath and shakes his head.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m fine. I need to help Kolivan.”

“Keith, just rest a bit, okay?” Hunk says. “Krolia and Shiro are with Kolivan.”

Raising his head, Keith looks up and sees three shapes – his vision blurs and he sinks back down to lying on the ground. His brain feels fuzzy. He feels a steady hand on his lower back, a reassuring weight telling him it’s okay to rest for a few minutes.

Over where Kolivan is, Krolia’s instructing Shiro to hold Kolivan around the chest while she cuts the bindings on his arms. There’s a groan of pain as luxite cuts through metal and Krolia lowers Kolivan’s arms. Another two cuts and a rush of movement.

Kosmo nudges Keith’s hand. Keith opens his eyes slowly, relieved that his sight’s not distorted but not wanting to make any sudden movements to change that. He offers the wolf a small smile and raises his hand to pet him on the head.

Hunk and Lance help him up slowly, each with one of Keith’s arms draped over their shoulders. Keith tries to ignore the rush of blood from his head. After a few moments, he’s able to stand on his own again, but Hunk and Lance stay beside him as they walk over to where Shiro and Krolia are lowering Kolivan to ground. They stop on the way to pick up Keith’s blade.

“We need to get him out of this cold, damp cave,” Krolia says. “Pidge, can you find us a way back up through the caverns?”

Keith frowns.  _Kosmo…can you do it?_

The wolf trots past him with a gentle swish of the tail. He glances up at Krolia. She nods, placing a hand in his fur. Kosmo lowers his head to touch Kolivan’s leg and then with a flash the three of them are gone.

“So, uh…” Lance says, glancing at Keith. “You know the way out of here?”

The answer is no, since Kosmo teleported them both into the middle of one of the tunnels. The best way is up, using their jetpacks. Which means using mental energy to power the jetpacks, and then having to catch himself when his feet hit the ground…

But Kosmo, tired as he is, flashes back to Keith’s side and teleports him up to the druid’s campsite where Kolivan and Krolia are. Keith sinks down to a crouch, a little disorientated but nonetheless relieved. He flashes the wolf a grateful smile.

Kolivan locks eyes with Keith. The Blade leader is not at all in good health, and quite frankly Keith has never seen him look so wrecked. There’s a vulnerability in Kolivan’s expression here, something he masks as soon as the other paladins jetpack up through the hole in the ground.

It’s a thank you…one so profound it can’t be put into words.

And Keith sees, for the first time in his life, a great respect in Kolivan’s eyes. It stabs him in the heart, to be looked at that way. Like Kolivan’s a father approving of his son’s choices in life. Like…

Keith doesn’t know how to describe what that feels like.

For a long while, Kolivan was the only one who’d been watching out for him. He’d kept him focused when Keith’s mind was plagued by self-depreciating thoughts. He’d been patient in letting Keith work through his emotions and had been there to give him a push when it became too much. When he’d come back from the Naxzela mission shaken, Kolivan had been there waiting, already anticipating the state Keith would be coming back in.

Krolia observes this exchange but doesn’t say anything.

 

 

A decent number of movements later, the first thing Keith sees when he opens his eyes are his mother and Kolivan smiling warmly at him. He stares for a while, confused…bewildered.

Krolia smiling he’s seen before, but Kolivan?

In the daze of waking up from several days in a coma, it occurs to Keith that Kolivan’s been becoming like family to him ever since he awoke the blade. That time the Blade leader had been unwilling to let him take over Thace’s part of the plan to take down Zarkon, he’d been worried Keith wouldn’t make it back. He’d accepted Keith into Blade ranks and trained him, and accepted him in again when things hadn’t been working out with Voltron.

And then, that time when Keith had been caught in a trap and then suffered kalvaki poisoning while he waited for his captors to fetch someone to hand him over to…Kolivan had broken Blade protocol to go back for him. There had been more to that than Keith being needed as a paladin.

It was because, by that stage, Keith and Kolivan had already fostered a father-son relationship of sorts, and family are people you break protocol for.

 

 


	29. Black Lion: Presence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of Season 7, Shiro carries Keith out the Black Lion. Black doesn't stop watching over Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I initially wrote this before KWmonth, I've also posted this as a seperate fic called 'Black Lion' (Part 7 of the KWmonth series).
> 
> Only two more prompts left after this!!! :O Thank you all so much for reading and commenting and kudo-leaving!!!!!!!!

He’s lost in a vast expanse of black. There’s a presence. It surrounds him. If he were to drift further into it, maybe he’d see stars.

Whatever it is, it won’t let him go there.

_But it’s safe there,_ Keith protests.

The presence doesn’t answer. Instead, it gives him a glimpse of the starry expanse he wants to be brought into. Only a glimpse – and then it’s gone.

It’s denying him the ability to enter.

_Alive,_ it says.

 

An unperceivable length of time passes. Keith’s not sure how long.

There’s a numbing pain in his left arm. He looks down to see what’s bothering him but he can’t see it. There’s a terrible throbbing in his forehead. He’s unsure of how the hurt got there, but it’s too concentrated and too weird a place to be a headache, though.

The pain in his arm gets worse. The ache in his head is horrendous. Keith’s not sure what it means or why it’s happening or how long it’ll last.

All he does is linger in this black.

A tug in his chest.  _Black._

_Keith._

Familiar. The presence – Black – reassures him that he’s safe, that he doesn’t need to worry about remembering anything just now.

_Rest._

She sends him visions of planets and clusters of stars. The emptiness in his chest is filled with air. A wind washes over his body.

It seems so tangible that Keith wonders if this is only partly being conveyed by Black.

What if the rushing of air over his skin is real?

Somewhere he hears voices, but he’s not sure if they’re real. He’s not sure if  _he’s_ real. For some reason he believes he isn’t. That if he is, he shouldn’t be.

Then the voices get louder. Urgent. One of them is achingly familiar but Keith’s gone before he can remember whose voice it is.

Gone… but where has he gone?

_Rest._

After checking Keith over for injuries, Shiro gently manoeuvres him out of the pilot’s seat and into his arms. The Black Lion’s on a lean, so now he’s bracing both his own weight and Keith’s against the tilt of the floor, but Shiro manages alright.

The shock is setting in really fast. Shiro needs to get Keith out of the Lion before his legs give way. He shuffles along, arms locked around Keith’s chest, and makes it out of the cockpit.

Keith’s entirely unresponsive. He says as much to the medical team waiting outside Black when he gets there. He lowers Keith so that he’s lying on the ramp. The two medical staff get to work with their assessing, helmet pried off to press a cloth against the cut at his hairline and to place an oxygen mask over the lower half of his face. Shiro slips out of the way and nearly crashed into Iverson and Griffin.

Somehow Shiro’s still standing. Iverson has a steadying hand on his shoulder. One of the medical staff turn to Shiro and ask something. They have to say it twice before Shiro registers what the question is.

_Right, his armour. They won’t be able to treat him with the armour still on._

There’s only been one time – thankfully – where Shiro had to help one of the paladins out of their armour. It had been Keith, whose hands were shaking too badly after revealing to everyone he was part-Galra. Shiro makes quick work of the arm guards, the belt, leg armour and the boots. Keith doesn’t even twitch.

When he comes to removing the chest plate, he proceeds extra carefully. The medical staff help him sit Keith up to get the back half off. There’s no changes in Keith’s breathing, an immense relief for everyone. The chest plate off, they check for broken ribs and find none. Shiro feels the colour start to ease back into his face.

Aside from extensive bruising and the cut on Keith’s head, the injuries of most concern appear to be the severity of concussion, the potential for internal bleeding and the coma-like state Keith isn’t coming out of. Shiro expects that the robeast’s komar resembling attack will be a major factor, but it worries him.

The other paladins weren’t out cold like this. Allura, Lance and Pidge had been responsive on retrieval, and Hunk had come around fairly quickly. Keith’s retrieval has taken the longest and he’s the worst of all of them.

“Shiro.”

He can’t lose Keith.

“He’s going to be okay.”

Iverson guides him back to the vehicle they came in. Shiro’s wide-eyed and staring and finding it hard to focus. James Griffin regards him warily as he takes the driver’s seat again. The medical team have Keith secured on a stretcher, and with Iverson’s help they load him into the back of the vehicle. Shiro climbs into the back with him while Iverson goes to retrieve the pieces of Keith’s armour.

“Shiro,” Griffin says, tone almost as gruff as Iverson’s. “He’s going to be okay. We just have to get him back to base.”

_‘Shiro, it’s going to be okay. We just have to get back to the Castle.’_

_‘We…aRE nOt GOing aNYWHerE!’_

Shiro looks down at Keith, face ashen beneath the mask and the bandage wrapped around his head. The mark on his cheek stands out like sharpie on blank paper.

It’s too much. Shiro winds down the window, leans over the panels on the door and retches.

He’s drifting again.

He no longer registers the pain in his arm but the pain in his head is still there. At least it’s easier to breathe now, so it’s bearable.

_Black…_ Keith thinks.  _Who are you?_

Her presence is acting like an anchor. That means she’s important to him somehow and he’s important to her.

_Black?_

The memories are just beyond reach. Keith stretches out his consciousness to try to grab a hold of them.

_Blurry daylight. That’s all he’s able to see when he opens his eyes. It’s nauseating, the way the ceiling tips sideways above him. He squeezes his eyes shut. Keith comes awake to a sharp pain in his abdomen. He can’t move without it tearing at his insides. His throat is dry and his head feels like it’s filled with cement._

_Water. He needs water._ Why can’t he get it?

_The howling desert wind outside makes the dizziness unbearable._

_Water…_ and a strange longing to search.

Keith recognises another presence. But it’s not Black. It’s…

…blue?

Blue?

_The sensation of water rushing over him. It relieves him of the feverish strain on his body, alleviates his thirst and stops his mind from spinning._

_He’s sure he’s delirious. In his head…it’s like there’s a voice telling him to search. It’s not a human voice and it’s not his own head voice. It’s more of a presence._

Blue. That was Blue.

The memory blurs and rolls into another.

 

 

The heart monitor beeps, slow and steady.

 

 

 

 

_He thinks he remembers passing out before the visions._ What visions?

_Red is angry._ Red?

_When he hears her roar, feels the surge of her emotions and the weight of her fury, there’s a tug in his chest that brings him back to reality. An anchor in the midst of the confusion the visions brought._

Something stirs inside Keith. This connection with Red is the same kind of connection he has with Black now.

_Red calls for him. She roars for him._

_She’s attacking the Blade of Marmora’s base for him._

_It’s this, and a set of familiar yet urgent footsteps growing louder, that he wakes to._

The memory fades.

Those footsteps…how come they sounded like one of those voices from earlier? Did they belong to the same person?

Strong. Resilient. Courageous.

These are both his thoughts and Black’s. They both know this person. This person is important to them both.

Dead. Saved. Revived. Alive.

He’s someone who brings people a lot of hope. He’s someone to admire.

Leader. Brother. Friend.

Paladin.

SHIRO.

Keith hears him now. He hears his voice. His brain won’t register the words but he can hear Shiro talking to him.

_Why does he sound…sad? Worried? Tired?_

_Rest,_ Black tells him.

_But what about Shiro?_

_Rest._

Keith doesn’t understand. He wants to know why Shiro’s voice sounds so strained.

_Rest._

He concentrates but doesn’t get anywhere. Right…patience yield focus. Those are Shiro’s words, right?

Black draws him back to herself, back to her calm.

Back to her presence.

_Rest._

 

 


	30. Space Craft: Pilot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 21. Pilot, from Keith's POV. Keith has to be pulled from the wreckage after crash-landing the ship on Earth in Season 7.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more day!! :O
> 
> Warning note: this may be triggering if you have experienced something akin to being trapped in wreckage or rubble. If you're unsure, I'd suggest going back and reading Prompt 21: Pilot, and imagine that chapter from Keith's perspective - that'll give you an idea of whether or not this might be triggering for you <3

On the other side of the suffocating darkness, Keith hears Pidge's Bayard activate.  
  
"Hunk," she yells. "Get over here!"  
  
There's a lot of words being exchanged, but they're muffled by the walls of metal and reinforced windshield keeping Keith separated from them. The voices are familiar, so they ought to be reassuring, but...  
  
They're taking a while, which means it must be bad.  
  
Keith tries to stay calm. He tries not to focus on the unrelenting pressure on his back, how his torso's slammed into the console, one arm splayed across the dash and the other hanging down beside his leg.  
  
So far he's managed to keep the panic at bay, but the longer he spends with his head stuck facing sideways, the less he has control over that thought. Keith tries to take deep breaths but he physically can't, and when he tries to use his hands and feet to push himself away from the console, his knees and elbows hit metal.  
  
Even if he summoned his Bayard, he wouldn't be able to move his arms or get enough leverage with the blade for it to be of any use.  
  
Which means he's trapped and he can't do anything about it.  
  
The helplessness is about ready to crush Keith's resolve not to cry when Lance's voice sounds close to the wreckage.  
  
"Keith! Whatever you do, don't move!"  
  
A Bayard activates. The sound of metal on metal, but Keith can't see to know what's happening because his helmet's forcing him to face the other way.  
  
Keith flinches as the metal groans. It shrieks and shudders, sending tremors through the dashboard and through Keith's chest. He thinks he feels the pressure on the centre of his back increase and he fights to breathe evenly.  
  
There's a sizzling, humming noise as Pidge powers up her Bayard. Keith swallows hard and waits.  
  
The noise is... he can't find the words for it. He want to cover his ears but he can't. He wants to get away from the horrid vibrations of Bayard on metal on Paladin armour but he can't.  
  
He wants to get free but he can't -  
  
A sliver of light falls into the cockpit. Kosmo barks. The vibrations stop momentarily, but then they start again.  
  
The others are calling his name but he's too busy desperately trying to keep himself together for as long as possible.  
  
A tear slips down his check.  
  
His throat constricts with fear.  
  
Kosmo won't stop barking.  
  
Keith loses his calm. It's one of the things he fears the most: being trapped, unable to move and unable to get himself out of there.  
  
A panel gives. There's a pause and then it's ripped free altogether.  
  
Light floods into the cockpit. They can see him now, but Keith can't see them. Keith's glad they can't see the wrecked expression on his face though. He's horrified enough at himself already.  
  
"Keith!"  
  
It's Pidge.  
  
"Hey, can you hear me?"  
  
Keith chokes on the emotion in his throat and manages a groan.  
  
"Keith? Are you with us?"  
  
He sucks in a breath. "...n't 'ea'e..."  
  
"Keith?"  
  
Kosmo whines.  
  
"I think he said he can't breathe, Pidge," Lance says. He hesitates. "He's not...?"  
  
"We need to remove what's pinning him down," Shiro says. "He can't breathe because his diaphragm can't expand properly."  
  
_Shiro_ . Keith whimpers.  
  
"You're going to be fine, Keith. Just hang in there another minute or so."

 

Just another minute. Another minute which will extend into another and then another...  
  
Pidge speaks next. "You realise that means we have to remove the entire roof."  
  
Then Hunk. "But won't that - "  
  
"Yes, it will."  
  
"Then we drag him out," Lance says. "You and Hunk keep the roof up while Shiro, Allura and I manoeuvre Keith out of there." He pauses, then comes closer to the gap they created in the wreckage, blotting out the light. "You don't have a leg stuck or anything, do you?"  
  
Keith can't turn his head in decline, so he whispers, "No."  
  
"Alright, then that's the plan. Let's hurry up. Pretty sure Keith doesn't want to spend the next however long waiting for us to discuss science. Romelle, Coran - be ready to help Hunk and Pidge if they need it."

Keith's biting back tears by the time someone's hand wraps around his wrist. Allura, Lance and Shiro are calling out reassurances to him and instructions along themselves, but Keith doesn't retain memory of any of them. He just concentrates on the firm grip around his wrist, the slow tugging at the collar of his armour, the slight lean he finds himself on as he's pulled sideways and watches his other hand slide along the dashboard with him.  
  
What he's later told is fifteen minutes later, his body is eased out from between the metal and the console that had had him sandwiched. His diaphragm expands. Keith draws a long, greedy breath of air - Earth air, as his helmet releases the air lock - and he wants to be sick with relief.  
  
Daylight and Earth air and space around him to move and people.  
  
Keith's shaking badly, and a mess of unstable emotions, but he collapses in the dirt of his home planet and just breathes.  
  
And breathes.  
  
He sobs. He can breathe.

Hands holding him steady. He can breathe.

 

 


	31. Free Day: Tranquiliser meets Keith (Shiro's POV)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro's POV of Prompt 26. Shiro. Keith is shot with a tranquiliser and Team Voltron are one frustrated family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last KWmonth prompt!! :O Thank you all soo much for reading, commenting and kudo-leaving - I'm overwhelmed with the awesome response to these ficlets!! 
> 
> There'll be a master post of all the KWmonth prompts up on the KWmonth Tumblr page within the next few days. If you've written something for it and your work isn't up there, please let us know! Otherwise, thanks heaps for your support and let us know if you're keen for a KWmonth 2k19! :)

Kosmo snarls, Shiro’s heart jolts, and Keith gets shot in the neck with a tranquiliser.

Shiro only catches a glimpse of the alarm on Keith’s face before Kosmo zaps him off the tarmac. The rest of his thoughts desolve in action.

He scans the rooftops first, and sure enough, a figure is retreating from view. Lance sees it to, levelling his bayard – presumably set to stun – as Iverson orders everyone not Voltron or MFE squadron to the side of the building. Allura steps in front of Romelle and Coran, Pidge fires up her jetpack and Hunk shields the families running for shelter…

_But where is Keith?!_

Then he hears it, a strained voice calling his name. “Shiro!”

He’s launching himself inside the vehicle at once.

Keith’s eyes slip shut just as he enters. He’s slumped on the floor, limbs splayed out around him and the tranquiliser dart lying next to his hand. His eyes snap open again as Shiro makes his way over to him, Kosmo letting him past, tensing up as though bracing himself for an attack –

“Woah, Keith, it’s just me. It’s Shiro.”

His voice is all the reassurance Keith needs. The tension leaves him and his body goes lax.

“Keith.”

The muscles in his face grow slack, eyelids closing.

“Keith!”

His head lolls to the side. Shiro hastily grabs him by the collar of his armour to stop him from hitting his head on the floor.

“No, no, stay with me,” he says. “Keith! Stupid quiznaking idiots!”

Shiro’s a little shocked to hear himself swear so readily, but he’s angry. First they strap him down and now Keith’s been knocked out with a tranquiliser. This time it’s probably not the Garrison’s fault, seeing as Iverson was rather apologetic about how they treated Shiro and Sam didn’t seem to know what was happening, but it makes Shiro furious all the same.

“Shiro, Keith! You in here?”

Hunk appears in the vehicle doorway. As soon as he sees Shiro and Kosmo crouched in front of Keith, he turns and calls an affirmation over his shoulder. A few seconds later, James Griffin hops in and closes the door behind him.

James frowns. “Is he…?”

“If you’re here to drive,” Shiro says, “just do it. Questions later.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shiro sits down and pulls Keith to lie across him, his one arm securing him like a seatbelt as James puts the vehicle into gear. Hunk takes a seat next to Kosmo and hangs onto the seat in front of him.

Outside, there’s the sound of Pidge’s bayard powered high, a tyre popping and a shrieking pigeon. Shiro turns his comms on about the same time as Hunk, and Griffin gets to listen to the great frenzy of activity and commentation of a family whose brother was just taken down for no valid reason at all. Shiro almost expects Griffin to remark how noise their comms are, but if anything he looks unnerved.

_No one messes with their team._

Shiro feels a stir of pride in his chest at how co-ordinated everyone is. Lance immediately steps into his role of the right hand of Voltron, directing Pidge and Allura to take care of the party who shot Keith and the other MFE’s to clear a path for Griffin, Hunk and Shiro to get Keith to a medbay. No one questions him, not even the MFE’s.

Keith is out cold and Shiro can’t carry him with one arm, so once Griffin parks outside the emergency medical entrance, Hunk takes him on his shoulders with his shield extended over Keith’s head. Kosmo and Shiro follow close by, scanning left, right and centre. James brings up the rear.

There’s already medtechs waiting for them. Shiro gives them a stern eye.

“The wolf’s staying with him,” he says when one of the staff try to stand in Kosmo’s way.

“But sir – “

Kosmo flashes and teleports around them. He sits down by the bed Hunk’s laying Keith down on and he doesn’t move.

“Like he said,” Hunk growls. “Kosmo’s staying.”

Pidge is shrieking over the comms. “Shiro, do you copy?”

“Yeah, Pidge,” Shiro says. “I’m here.”

“We caught them. The dart was loaded with a fast acting sedative and a truth serum.”

“So they’d planned on taking him?”

Hunk mutters something under his breath. “Who would do that?”

“I don’t know,” Pidge says, “but they’re with the Garrison. Thought they could use him for some kind of negotiation with Sendak. Iverson’s taking them in for questioning now.”

Shiro steps to the side of the room to give Hunk room to shed Keith of his Paladin armour and the medtechs room to finish setting up.

“Was there anything in the tranquiliser besides what you just mentioned? Anything potentially toxic?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Pidge says. “Allura’s checking their getaway vehicle now. I’ll let you know – _what the quiznak!_ If I get my hands on them again!”

Shiro exchanges a glance with Hunk.

“Pidge,” he says slowly. “Did you find something?”

“Just a massive coil of quiznaking rope!”

The moment she says it, Hunk frowns in horror. “They don’t know he’s Galra, do they?”

The medtechs stall. Kosmo growls, long and firm, and Shiro and Hunk join in with a warning glare. There’s no verbal communication between the two Paladins, but both of them decide that instant that they’re not leaving Keith without at least one of them by his side.

Fifteen minutes of checks later, Keith’s lying back with a blanket up to his waist and an IV in his hand. Griffin delivers them a message from Iverson saying that there’s going to be some debriefing of the situation in half an hour, but neither Shiro nor Hunk budge.

There’s a groan from the bed. Keith’s eyebrows twitch but he doesn’t wake.

Shiro moves to his side. “Keith?”

James Griffin is still waiting for some kind of answer.

“Shiro,” Hunk says tightly, “you’ll stay with him?”

The medtechs have just slipped out of the room to pack up excess supplies, but they’re still within hearing distance. Shiro makes the second meaning to his words loud and clear.

“I don’t want him waking up alone.”

 With a moment of silence that reiterates how they’re not going to let _anyone_ lay their hands on Keith, Hunk leaves with Griffin. They keep the comms on.

“How long?” Shiro asks the moment the medtechs reappear.

“The sedative should wear off in a few hours,” one of them says.

Shiro’s brow furrows. “A few _hours_?”

“The dose had a fairly high concentration of drugs in it. It’ll be a while before it’s out of his system, so I’d suggest we keep him here overnight.”

“You can monitor Keith if you like, but he’s staying with us. Is that clear?”

The medtechs stand to attention and salute. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. You’re all dismissed.”

They don’t linger. Shiro sits down in the bedside chair and takes Keith’s hand to reassure him he’s not leaving. Kosmo lies down with is head resting on his front paws, but he doesn’t close his eyes.

Shiro grips Keith’s hand and starts venting. He’s angry. He still blames himself for the harm his clone – this body – did to his little brother and Keith will always have the mark to remind him. As many times as it takes is what they say, and yet Shiro can’t help but feel like he’s failed Keith one too many times.

It’s not his responsibility to protect everyone around him, it’s just…after Kerberos…

_“My crew was captured by aliens once. I’m not going to let it happen again.”_

Shiro looks at Keith and promises he’s not going to rest until he makes sure this doesn’t happen again. Keith doesn’t seem to hear him, but Kosmo does.

And with a satisfied grumble, Kosmo turns his head to the side and closes his eyes.

 

 


End file.
